Thus the proceedings ended.
“Well I never!” cried Henry Adolphus, when they had all left. “Mr. Peace convicted of burglary!”
“Oh, there must be some mistake,” returned Brickett; “it can’t be our Peace—’taint at all likely—’taint reasonable to s’pose such a thing. Why, he was one of the best fellows out.”
“So everybody ses; but it’s ’ard to know people nowadays. Still, I can’t b’lieve that tale.”
“The p’leece ought to know,” suggested a man, holding in his hand a tankard of ale; “if they doesn’t know, who does?”
“You just shut up,” cried the landlord. “Nobody asked your ’pinion. I tell ’ee they do not know—so that’s enough.”
“All right, guvner, I be dun; you know these matters a deal better than what I do, I dare say.”
After the departure of the coroner, the jury, witnesses, and constables, the people in the “Lion” threw off all restraint, and conversed freely on the all-absorbing topic. They commented on the evidence with great acumen—I mean rustic acumen.
Everybody agreed upon one point, this being for the murderer of young Jamblin being brought to justice in the shortest possible space of time.
When the funeral of the murdered man took place all the populations of Broxbridge and the surrounding districts turned out to do honour to the obsequies of the young farmer.