"Well," I answered, "it was the best thing I could do in the circumstances."
"Yes," he said; "but I don't think you would have painted the little home in such glowing colours if you had seen what I saw last week when I was driving past the cottage. No, no; I think you'd have toned down a bit."
"What was it?" I asked.
"Why," said the old inhabitant, "the little children who sobbed so violently in court this morning, and to whom you made such pathetic reference, were playing on an ash-heap near their cottage; and they had a poor cat with a string round its neck, swinging backwards and forwards, and as they did so they sang,—
This is the way poor daddy will go!
This is the way poor daddy will go!'
Such, Mr. Hawkins, was their excessive grief!"
Yes, but it got the verdict.
CHAPTER VI.
AN INCIDENT ON THE ROAD TO NEWMARKET.
My first visit to Newmarket Heath had one or two little incidents which may be interesting, although of no great importance. The Newmarket of to-day is not quite the same Newmarket that it was then: many things connected with it have changed, and, above all, its frequenters have changed; and if "things are not what they seem," they do not seem to me, at all events, to be what they were "in my day."