“Now, then, you see what I have got to do. I have got to do, and ‘fail not at my peril,’ mind you. Though what peril I should risk in not executing of a warrant is more than I know, long as I have been in the county’s service; and very few warrants have I ever had to serve, and that’s a fact; and very sorry I am to have to do this, moreover.”
“You must do your duty, Mr. Bowen. Neither I nor my friend here will offer any further opposition to it,” said Le, good-humoredly. Then, turning to his companion, he added, sorrowfully:
“Oh, Roland, good, old boy, I am so cut up at the thought of having got you into this mess!”
“Don’t turn into a blooming idiot, Le. I am glad to be with you in everything. You know it,” said Roland, heartily.
“I do know it!” exclaimed Le, pressing his friend’s hand.
“Oh, see these boys!” sighed the old man; “these boys I have known ever since they wore short jackets and check ap’ons! But don’t fret, lads. ’Twon’t go hard with you. And it’s a heap better, anyhow, than if you’d been left to your own devices to-day, and fought your duel and killed your man, and had to be arrested for murder to-morrow. Now, that might o’ been serious.”
“But there was a good chance that I might have been killed myself,” suggested Le.
“D‘y’ call that ‘a good chance’? Oh, you misguided young man!” cried the elder. “To be hurried into the presence of your Maker with murder in your heart! But I won’t lecture, Mr. Le. I will leave that to the squire. He can, and I reckon he will. Now, then, young gentlemen, maybe we had better be moving. There is a carriage at the door—a most comfortable close carriage—sent by the squire himself. Ah, he had a care for you both, the good squire had. ‘Do your necessary duty as kindly as you can, Bowen,’ says he to me, he says, after he had put the papers in my hands with his own, and explained what I was to do. And I answered: ‘Squire, do you think being county constable for nigh on to fifty years has made a brute beast of old Tom Bowen? Do you suppose that I could handle harsh the two lads I’ve knowed since they wore check ap’ons? The one lad as growed up in your house? And the other lad as I helped to resky myself when the schooner Blue Bird was wrecked on the shore?’ But there! It’s no use talking. People say I’m getting too old for my office. Well, let ’em. I mean to hold on to it as long as I can read a warrant or ride a horse. If only to pervent some one taking my place who will be hard on skipple-skapple young uns like you.”
“Mr. Bowen, you have had a long ride. Won’t you take some home-brewed beer and bread and cheese before you go?” inquired Le.
The dull young man of the red head and freckled face looked up expectantly, but the old constable shook his head, and answered, solemnly: