Without farther parley, Colin now bade Mrs. Palethorpe follow him, and led her into the presence of the Squire. That gentleman, for the first time since the death of his wife, was observed to smile when made acquainted with the poor woman's story. In the course of making out her case, she informed Mr. Lupton how, upon her visit with Palethorpe to London, she had somehow consented in a foolish moment to be married to him, immediately on their return; that, accordingly, that event had taken place at Barwick Church; how tipsy he got the first day of their wedding; how scandalously he had neglected everything since, except his drinking; and how abominably he had treated her almost from that very day up to the present moment.
As Mr. Lupton had previously been made familiar with the whole story of their love and their conduct by Colin, he did not feel any very deep grief at Mrs. Palethorpe's present case; though, at the same time, he rejoiced at the opportunity afforded him for punishing as degraded and criminal a being as ever was brought before him. He accordingly issued a warrant for Palethorpe's apprehension, and during the same day had him brought up. When he made his appearance Colin was in the next room, and beheld a countenance more expressive at once of the ferocious brute and the sot than could probably be met with anywhere else throughout the country side. Mr. Palethorpe seemed indeed to have made himself so uncommonly glorious the night before, as to forestall all the glory of the ensuing forty-eight hours. His eyes had much the look of a couple of red coddled gooseberries, and his mouth that of one of those sun-made rifts which, during the dry summer-time he trod over in his own baked fallow fields.
“I didn't mean to hurt meesis!” said he, in reply to the complaint urged against him. “I was raither insinuated in drink when I did it.”
“But you must be a most brutal fellow,” replied the Squire, “to strike your own wife.”
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“I didn't want to marry her!” exclaimed Palethorpe. “She collyfugled me into it, by dint of likker and possets; and so she has herself to thank for't!”
And on the delivery of this heroic sentiment Mr. Palethorpe stared at all present with the confidence of one who feels that the victory is already his. Unluckily for him, however, Mr. Lupton did not take that sort of logic as correspondent with law; but instead, ordered him to pay a crown for having been drunk, and committed him for a fortnight to that identical place to which the prisoner himself and his lady had once threatened to send Colin,—I mean York Castle,—for the assault upon his wife. In addition to this, it is perhaps scarcely necessary to add, he was bound in sureties to keep the peace towards all the King's subjects for the space of one year;—a restriction which not only materially lessened the amount of domestic revolutions in the farm at Whinmoor, but also the number of physical outbreaks at the various pot-houses and village wakes throughout the surrounding neighbourhood.