“Yes, yes; I was in it—I was in it.”
I couldn’t help shuddering. It made me creepy to look at that venerable old man and think that he’d been in a murder.
It took Mr. Wilkins a long time to get the story out of the old gentleman, and it took the old gentleman longer to tell it, for he kept wandering, and he would leave off and go into a lot of outside matters to make himself remember whether a day was a Monday or a Tuesday, when it didn’t matter which it was. You know the sort of thing; but when he had finished his story I was bound to confess it was a very wonderful thing, and it was all true, for Mr. Wilkins borrowed the old newspaper that the Gaffer had kept, and showed it me there.
Fifty years ago, it seemed, in the village next ours—the village where Curnock’s farm was—there was a terrible trouble about the tithes. The parson was disliked by the people, especially the farmers, and some of the farmers wouldn’t pay the tithes at all, and stirred the people up against him, and as far as I could make out, Ned Curnock, a young farmer in the neighbourhood, was the ringleader; so the parson got the law of him, and had a lot of his goods seized and taken away to pay the tithes.
He was fearfully mad about that, and swore he’d be revenged. At that time Tom Gabbitas was a labourer on the farm, and an old servant, for he was forty then.
Ned Curnock and another man—a young fellow, the son of a farmer—went out one night to waylay the parson, who had been to the Squire’s house to a party, and had to ride home through a dark lane. They said they’d give him a jolly good hiding, and that was all they meant to do. The only man who knew they’d gone, and what their errand was, was Tom Gabbitas, for he heard them talking it over, they not knowing he was near them, it being dark at the time.
About ten o’clock they went out, with two big sticks, and about eleven o’clock they came back. Ned Curnock was as white as death, and his clothes were all over blood. Tom met them, and they confided in him and told him what had happened, making him take an awful oath he’d never reveal a word to any living soul that could harm either of them.
It seems they’d met the parson, and pulled him off his horse, and begun to thrash him, when he had pulled out a pistol to shoot them. They got it from him, and somehow or other it went off and shot the parson, and they ran away; but they said they were sure he was killed, and it was a murder job.
Tom Gabbitas ran off to the place to get help, and when he got there he found other people there too. The parson was just dead; but he’d had time to say that he’d been murdered by two men, and he’d recognized one of them as Ned Curnock.
Tom only stopped to hear that, and bolted back and told his master, who was terribly frightened, and said he should be hanged, and how was he to escape? The young fellow who was with him said, “You must hide till the coast’s clear. Where can you hide? They’ll think you’ve run away.”