THE OUTLAW
Everybody knew old Jasper Trent, the Crimean Veteran who had helped to beat the "Roosians and the Proosians," and who, so it was rumored, had more wounds upon his worn, bent body than there were months in the year.
The whole village was proud of old Jasper, proud of his age, proud of his wounds, and proud of the medals that shone resplendent upon his shrunken breast.
Any day he might have been seen hobbling along by the river, or pottering among the flowers in his little garden, but oftener still sitting on the bench in the sunshine beside the door of the "Three Jolly Anglers."
Indeed, they made a fitting pair, the worn old soldier and the ancient inn, alike both long behind the times, dreaming of the past, rather than the future; which seemed to me like an invisible bond between them. Thus, when old Jasper fell ill and taking to his bed had it moved opposite the window where he could lie with his eyes upon the battered gables of the inn—I for one could understand the reason.
The Three Jolly Anglers is indeed ancient, its early records long since lost beneath the dust of centuries; yet the years have but served to mellow it. Men have lived and died, nations have waxed and waned, still it stands, all unchanged beside the river, watching the Great Tragedy which we call "Life" with that same look of supreme wisdom, that half-waggish, half-kindly air, which I have already mentioned once before.
I think such inns as this must extend some subtle influence upon those who meet regularly within their walls—these Sons of the Soil, horny-handed, and for the most part grey of head and bent with over much following of the plough. Quiet of voice are they, and profoundly sedate of gesture, while upon their wrinkled brows there sits that spirit of calm content which it is given so few of us to know.
Chief among these, and held in much respect, was old Jasper Trent. Within their circle he had been wont to sit ensconced in his elbow-chair beside the hearth, his by long use and custom, and not to be usurped; and while the smoke rose slowly from their pipe-bowls, and the ale foamed in tankards at their elbows, he would recount some tale of battle and sudden death—now in the freezing trenches before Sebastopol, now upon the blood-stained heights of Inkermann. Yet, and I noticed it was always towards the end of his second tankard, the old man would lose the thread of his story, whatever it might be, and take up the topic of "The Bye Jarge."
I was at first naturally perplexed as to whom he could mean, until Mr. Amos Baggett, the landlord, informed me on the quiet that the "bye Jarge" was none other than old Jasper's only son—a man now some forty years of age—who, though promising well in his youth; had "gone wrong"—and was at that moment serving a long term of imprisonment for burglary; further, that upon the day of his son's conviction old Jasper had had a "stroke," and was never quite the same after, all recollection of the event being completely blotted from his mind, so that he persisted in thinking and speaking of his son as still a boy.
"That bye were a wonder!" he would say, looking round with a kindling eye; "went away to make 'is fortun' 'e did—oh! 'e were a gen'us were that bye Jarge! You, Amos Baggett, were 'e a gen'us or were 'e not."