“Aye, aye, to be sure, my daughter. You do well to recall me to a pressing duty. I must from Burnplatts to the Moorcock Inn and beard the lion, nay the lion and his whelp, in their den. Here, happily, I shall go armed with the sword of the Word, for it teemeth with denunciations of those who bear false witness against their neighbours, and tells how the counsels of the wicked shall be brought to nought. To be sure Bill’s o’ Jack’s is out of my parish, yet where the wicked are to be thwarted who shall set bounds and measures for the servant of the Lord?” And my father glared enquiringly round the room, as though challenging an imaginary audience to deny his right to speak the Word in season when and where he would. Of his right within the wide expanse watered by the Colne he made no question—he had come to regard it as his spiritual own, his vineyard, his parish.
“That’s all very well, father,” commented Ruth, “and doubtless you could speak to the Burnplatters and the Bradburys to their eternal profit. But I’ve a better plan; one that will keep Ephraim Sykes out of harm and cover those who plot his destruction with confusion. Now you two, listen to me. A woman’s wit, you know, can jump over a wall whilst a man is groping round for a gate.”
And my father listened meekly, for he loved Ruth as the apple of his eye, and she now had her way with him. Then Ruth unfolded her plan, and as I listened I rubbed my hands together gleefully, and when it stood revealed in all its completeness, clapped Ruth on the back and declared with conviction that such a headpiece was thrown away on a woman and she ought to have been ’prenticed to a ’torney, a compliment that Ruth received with deprecating modesty, and clearly not ill-pleased, though, to be sure, it was one of our most rooted and cherished convictions that all attornies were sons of the Father of Lies, and bound to end up in the brimstone lake. Yet have I ever noticed that—such is the perverseness of human nature—a man, and not less a woman, would rather be set down as monstrous clever, and in some danger of the Judgment, than ranked as a fool and a dullard though conceded to be a saint. Now what Ruth’s plot was I must not, nor need, disclose, but you who read what ensued when Ephraim Sykes was brought up before the Bench at Huddersfield on a charge of trespassing in pursuit of game, a few days after the October Fair, will I think probably divine.
I think the little Justices’ Court at the market town cannot often have been so crowded as it was that day. All Burnplatts was there, and many a sturdy rogue, and vagabond assisted as a spectator who oft aforetime had played the part of leading villain in some petty drama in that shabby forum. And all Pole Moor and half Slaithwaite to boot. For the due development of Ruth’s scheming had required that we should take into our confidence one of my father’s sedate deacons, old Enoch Hoyle, of Merry Dale. Enoch had been vowed to silence, but he confessed afterwards that he was so big with the part that had been assigned to him that twenty times a day he had had to stop his hand-loom to laugh joyously to himself, and that she had so often alarmed his next-door neighbour by breaking out into smothered chuckling that he had been concerned for his mind’s health, and had threatened to fetch Dr. Dean to him and have him sent to “th’ ’Sylum.” Then, after drawing an awful picture of what would befall if he ever muffed about the matter to a single soul, he let the good soul into the secret; and it’s a mercy a good few miles of wild moorland lay between Merry Dale and Bill’s o’ Jack’s, or all our plotting had been in vain. So well-nigh all Slaithwaite was in the Court-room or, baulked in the endeavour to squeeze inside, waited the result patiently in the street or the adjacent inn. Ephraim, of course, was there, and in custody of constables. Two days and two nights had he lain in Towzer, as they called the Lock-up, and a merry time he had had of it, by all accounts, being in no lack of food and drink, and treating his custodians so lavishly that they were to be excused if they wished they might retain him as a permanent guest. Bill o’ Jack’s and Tom o’ Bill’s were clad in velveteen coats and drab gaiters, and Tom dangled on his hand a brace of hares bigger and plumper than any hares I had ever set eyes on before. They’d got Mr. Alison for their attorney, and I watched that ferret-faced limb of the law with not a little concern, for he looked so cock-sure of winning his case, when he rose to open it to the magistrates, and they listened with so evident a trust to every word he said, that my heart misgave me. It was a very clear case, said Mr. Alison. The prisoner had been caught in flagrante delicto; he was a suspicious character whose antecedents alone where enough to convict him, and he was the ringleader of a notorious gang of pestilent knaves who had too long been suffered to prey upon society. However, it was a true saying that the jug went off to the well, but got broke at last. The prisoner had had many a narrow escape, but now he stood in the dock on a charge supported by the clearest and directest evidence, and society for some years would doubtless be rid, and well rid, of a most dangerous character. The information had been laid by Thomas Bradbury, a gamekeeper residing with his wife and family at Greenfield, but better known as of the Moorcock Inn at Bill’s o’ Jack’s, though in fact that hostelry was kept by his venerable father. Doubtless both father and son were known to their Worships, and they would know them as zealous servants of the law. Theirs was a most necessary and also a most dangerous calling—necessary, for what would England be if the gentry were robbed of their sport, and dangerous because it exposed them to the violence of the lawless Poachers who preyed upon the preserves so much wealth was lavished in maintaining. Sport, gentlemen, was a sacred institution. It had made Englishmen—of the higher classes—what they were and England what it was, and must be ranked in sanctity with Church and State. But that topic he would not enlarge, though it was one very near and dear to his heart, as doubtless it was to the hearts of their Worships (and, indeed, by the looks of them he spoke the truth there), He would not waste the time of the Court by any prolix opening. The facts would speak for themselves and the facts would best appear from the mouths of the unimpeachable witnesses he would place in that box before them. Call Thomas Bradbury.
Then Tom o’ Bill’s stepped heavily into the box, placed the two poor dead hares conspicuously in front of him, kissed the greasy little Testament with a smack, touched his forehead respectfully to the magistrates, and turned an attentive face to the little attorney.
“Your name is Thomas Bradbury, and you are a gamekeeper residing at Sidebank on the turnpike road between Greenfield and Bill’s o’ Jack’s?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Your father is William Bradbury, and he keeps the Moorcock Inn at Bill’s o’ Jake’s?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Now, on the afternoon of the 16th inst., were you at the Huddersfield Fair?