“Because he never hollered nor looked at us, and it made us feel so funny.”
“Did you go straight down to the Wash?”
They had all done so.
“What time was it when you reached home?”
They had all been at home by ten, before Richpin had left the church.
“Why do they call it Frenchman’s Meadow?” asked another boy, evidently anxious to change the subject.
Mr. Batchel replied that the meadow had probably belonged to a Frenchman whose name was not easy to say, and the conversation after this was soon in another channel. But, furnished as he was with an unmistakeable alibi, the story about Richpin and the torn trousers, and the flint, greatly puzzled him.
“Go straight home,” he said, as the boys at last bade him good-night, “and let us have no more stone-throwing.” They were reckless boys, and Richpin, who used little discretion in reporting their misdemeanours about the church, seemed to Mr. Batchel to stand in real danger.
Frenchman’s Meadow provided ten acres of excellent pasture, and the owners of two or three hard-worked horses were glad to pay three shillings a week for the privilege of turning them into it. One of these men came to Mr. Batchel on the morning which followed the conversation at the club.
“I’m in a bit of a quandary about Tom Richpin,” he began.