[CHAPTER IV.]
THE MAGISTRATES' MEETING.
UPTOWN was not worthy of the name of town; it could hardly be called a large village. But it was the centre of a wide agricultural district, and a small market was held in it once a week, chiefly for the sale of butter and eggs, as the farmers carried their corn to a more important market farther away, in the county town. A magistrates' meeting was held at Uptown at stated intervals; and there was a police-station just outside the village, provided with two cells, but seldom occupied, in one of which Ishmael had been safely kept since noonday on Saturday.
Heavy-hearted still, though with a fund of secret courage bearing her up, Ruth entered Uptown on the Monday morning. There was more stir than usual about the single street, as there always was on the days when the magistrates came to hear the trivial cases which awaited their judgment. Round the inn where the justices' room was, there were several groups of somewhat discreditable folks hanging about in readiness.
Nutkin was within the inn-yard, eagerly talking to one of the magistrates who had arrived before the others, and had just dismounted from his horse. Ruth saw him, but it was as if she did not see him, so absorbed was her whole soul in watching for Ishmael to come along the road between the town and the police-station. She was half unconscious of the increasing crowd and stir, as the magistrates rode in one after another; and the magistrates' clerk bustled down from his house with his blue bag full of papers. Mrs. Clift had arrived too with Elsie; and Squire Lansdowne was gone into the large room of the inn; but she only half knew it.
At last Ishmael appeared, walking beside a policeman, who kept his hand tightly on his collar, as if to remind him it was of no use to try to escape. But could this sullen, scowling lad, with rough uncombed hair and tear-stained face, be Ishmael? He was close beside her, yet he never raised his eyes; and he would have passed her by, if she had not cried out in a very lamentable voice, "Oh, Ishmael, Ishmael!"
"It's my mother," he said, as the policeman tightened his grasp of his collar. "Don't you come inside, mother dear. It 'ud do no good, and it 'ud make me cry. You go home again now you've seen me to say good-bye. You'll loose me to kiss my mother?" he added, looking at the policeman.
"Ay, if you're sharp about it," he answered.
For a minute the young boy, scarcely more than a child, and the bent, grey-haired woman stood with their arms fondly clinging about each other. Ruth felt as if she could not let him go; it seemed but a few days since he was but a baby in her bosom; and now he was a prisoner charged with an offence against the laws of his country. But Ishmael loosened his hands and let himself be led away inside the magistrates' room.