"Can't say we've got one," said the other constable, for Mr. Leathersides was exhausted.
"If you apprehended him illegally," said Sir John Slingsby, magisterially, "you detained him still more illegally. Leathersides, you're a fool. Mr. What's-your-name, you're an ass. You've both violated the law, and I've a great mind to fine you both--a bumper--so I will, by Jove. Come here and drink the king's health;" and Sir John laughed heartily while inflicting this very pleasant penalty, as they thought it, upon the two constables; but resolved to carry the joke out, the baronet, as soon as the men had swallowed the wine, exclaimed, in a pompous tone: "Stephen Gimlet, you are charged with poaching in the streets of Tarningham, and convicted on the sufficient testimony of two constables. Appear before the court to receive sentence. Prisoner, your sentence is this; that you be brought up to this table, and there to gulp down, at a single and uninterrupted draught, one glass of either of those two liquors called Port or Madeira, at the discretion of the court, to the health of our sovereign lord the king; and that, having so done, you shall be considered to have made full and ample satisfaction for the said offence."
"With all my heart, Sir," said Ste Gimlet, taking the glass of wine which Sir John Slingsby offered him. "Here's to the king, God bless him! and may he give us many such magistrates as Sir John Slingsby."
"Sir, I've a great mind to fine you another bumper for adding to my toast," exclaimed the baronet; and then, waving his hand to the constables, he continued: "Be off, the prisoner is discharged; you've nothing more to do with him--stay here, Master Gimlet, I've something to say to you;" and when the door was shut, he continued, with a very remarkable change of voice and manner: "Now, my good friend, I wish to give you a little bit of warning. As I am Lord of the Manor for many miles round the place where you live, the game you have taken must be mine, and, therefore, I have thought myself justified in treating the matter lightly, and making a joke of it. You may judge, however, from this, that I speak disinterestedly, and as your friend, when I point out to you, that if you follow the course you are now pursuing, it will inevitably lead you on to greater offences. It will deprave your mind, teach you to think wrong right, to resist by violence the assertion of the law, and, perhaps, in the end, bring you to the awful crime of murder, which, whether it be punished in this world or not, is sure to meet its retribution hereafter."
"Upon my life and soul, Sir John," said Ste Gimlet, earnestly, "I will never touch a head of game of yours again."
"Nor any one else's, I hope," answered Sir John Slingsby, "you are an ingenious fellow I have heard, and can gain your bread by better means."
"How?" inquired the man, emphatically; but the moment after he added, "I will try at all events. This very morning, I was thinking I would make a change, and endeavour to live like other people; but then I fancied it would be of no use. First, people would not employ me, and I feared to try them. Next, I feared myself; for I have led a wild rambling kind of life, and have got to love it better than any other. If there were a chance of men treating me kindly and giving me encouragement, it might answer; but if I found all faces looking cold on me, and all hearts turned away from me, though perhaps I have deserved it, I am afraid I should just fall back into my old ways again. However, I will try--I will try for the child's sake, though it will be a hard struggle at first, I am sure."
Sir John Slingsby laid his finger upon his temple and thought for a moment. He had been serious for a long while--fully five minutes--and he had some difficulty in keeping up his grave demeanour; but that was not all: some words which Ned Hayward had let fall almost at random, suggested a plan to his mind which he hesitated whether he should adopt or not. Perhaps--though he was a kind-hearted man, as we have seen and said before--he might have rejected it, had it not been for its oddity; but it was an odd plan, and one that jumped with his peculiar humour. He was fond of doing all sorts of things that other men would not do, just because they would not--of trying experiments that they dared not try--of setting at defiance every thing which had only custom and convention for its basis; and, therefore, after an instant's meditation, given to the consideration of whether people would suppose he was actuated by benevolence or eccentricity (he would not have had them think he did an odd thing from benevolence for the world), he went on as the whim prompted to reply to Stephen Gimlet's last words, mingling a high degree of delicacy of feeling with his vagaries, in the strangest manner possible, as the reader will see.
"Well Ste," he said, "perhaps we may make it less of a struggle than you think. I'll tell you what, my fine fellow, you're very fond of game--a little too fond perhaps. Now, my friend, Ned Hayward--that's to say, Captain Hayward. Where the deuce he has gone to?--I don't known--ran after the clumsy fellow, I suppose, who fired through the window and missed the deer too, I'll be bound. It must have been Conolly, the underkeeper; nobody but Conolly would have thought of firing right towards the window--but as I was saying, my friend, Ned Hayward, said just now that you'd make a capital keeper. What do you think of it, Gimlet? Wouldn't it do?"
"Not under Mr. Hearne, Sir," answered Ste Gimlet. "We've had too many squabbles together;" and he shook his head.