It was in vain for Mrs. Peace to interfere, for she knew that the chances would have been that she would have been subjected to a similar course of treatment, for Peace ruled his two female companions with a rod of iron.
Bill Rawton strove to pacify the tyrant. He was a man who never at any time of his life treated one of the opposite sex with unkindness, and Peace’s conduct towards the “ladies” of his establishment met with Bill’s unqualified disapproval.
As time went on, however, the owner of the home in the Evalina-road toned down, and it is said that he expressed his regret for his barbarity—anyway, he became more considerate towards those who might at any given moment have handed him over to the officers of the law.
But we must leave the brutal burglar for a while, to take a glance at some of the other characters, who figure in this history.
In the succeeding chapters it will be our purpose to chronicle the career of our hero, with something like an unbroken course of action.
It is, perhaps, needless to say that Mr. Algernon Sutherland dodged the police; he did not present himself at the police-court, where the second examination should have taken place, and the magistrate, Mr. Kensett, felicitated himself upon the fact that the young man had contrived to give his enemies the slip.
Many months had passed over since the capture, and fresh examination of Sutherland took place, and the affair had by this time been nearly if not quite forgotten.
It was autumn, and the harvest time was over, the fields were no longer forests of waving corn, but bare and yellow stubble; the yards of the farmers were filled with portly and imposing sacks of corn, warm and sweet beneath thin roofs of pale clean thatch.
Harvest time is the holiday of country labourers—one of hard work and high wages, which is the best holiday of all.
At harvest time men and women, who in some parts of England are still preferred to machines, earn the chance of buying for themselves and families new corduroy trousers, cotton gowns, and nailed boots for the ensuing year.