"What's the meaning o' this?" he asked, turning the document over.
"It's an injunction."
"That makes me no wiser, my son."
"It's a paper to restrain you from plying this ferry for hire pending a suit Killow versus Vro in which you are named as defendant."
"'Suit'—'verses'? Darn the fellow, what's to do with verses? Come to me with your verses!" Nicky tossed the injunction contemptuously down in the sternsheets.
"You'll find 'tis the law," said the stranger warningly.
"The law? I've a-seen the law, my friend, over to Bodmin, and 'tis a very different looking chap from you, I can assure 'ee. The law rides in a gilt coach with trumpets afore it, and two six-foot fellows up behind in silk stockings and powder. The law be that high and mighty it can't even wear its own nat'ral hair. And you come to me stinkin' of beer in a reach-me-down overcoat, and pretend you be the law! You'll be tellin' me next you're Queen Victoria. But it shows what a poor kind o' case Rosewarne must have, that he threatens me wi' such a make-believe."
That Nicky had been alarmed for the moment cannot be denied. His uneasiness died away, however, as the days passed and nothing happened. The paper he stowed away at home in the skivet of his chest, and very foolishly said nothing about it even to his neighbour Hosken.
Indeed he had almost forgotten it when, just before Christmas, the stranger appeared again on the slip with another paper.
"Hullo! More verses?"