The gamekeeper laughed.
“’Tis a fair hit,” he answered. “But I’ve owned up afore all men that I wronged Daniel, an’ humbly axed my own son’s pardon for doubting him. If he can forgive me, you chaps did ought to. Come to think of it, ’tis no business of yourn, when all’s said.”
Mr Bartley and the young man Samuel Prowse were discussing a recent trial.
“In my wide experience of evil-doers,” said the policeman, “I never met his match for far-reaching cunning. Such a straight Bible face too—looked you in the eyeball like honesty’s self! And all the time no better’n a nest of snakes in his heart. From a professional view, ’tis a thing to be proud of, perhaps—I mean, to have the wickedest criminal ever knowed in the west country come from among us. ’Tis a sort of fame, I suppose.”
“Your business have turned your head, Bartley,” declared Mr Hext. “’Tis a thing to be shamed of, not proud of—a blot upon us—that such a outrageous rip should appear here in this peaceful an’ honest town.”
“He wasn’t Devonshire, however,” explained Prowse. “The man comed from over the border, I believe.”
“Somerset’s welcome to him,” said Sweetland. “Anyway he’s out of mischief for five years. Maybe Portland Prison will drive the fear of God into the man; but I’m not hopeful.”
“’Twas a near touch they didn’t fetch him in mad,” explained Bartley. “The chap who defended him tried terrible hard to do it; and he based his plea ’pon the fact that, even after he was bowled out, Titus Sim wouldn’t confess and wouldn’t support that last dying speech of Parkinson’s.
“But he did afterwards,” Sam Prowse reminded them. “He confessed after that he’d been Parkinson’s accomplice all along.”
“Yes, after he’d got his five years and knew the worst,” returned Mr Bartley. “He wasn’t mad, though he certainly had a great gift of loving a woman, which may be a sort of madness.”