"Then, sir," the chairman cried in his most tremendous voice, "the matter must pass from our hands into those of a higher tribunal. We shall appeal to the District Council, and that body will, if necessary, carry the case further, even to the Court of County Council itself."
Silence followed, during which every parishioner save one in that crowded schoolroom felt thankful Highfield had a leader capable of carrying their grievances to the foot of the Throne if necessary. About the District Council little was known, beyond the fact that it had never yet interfered in any parochial affairs; while the Dumpy Philosopher seemed to be the only person primed with information concerning the County Council.
"It make roads and builds asylums," he explained. "The gentlemen what belong to it are called Esquire; and they'm mostly in Parliament."
The Dismal Gibcat had the wickedness to declare that he defied all Councils. There never had been a right of way across his field, and there never should be. Out of simple goodness of heart he had refrained from interfering with the homeward progress of a few weary labourers, although they had not asked permission to trample down his pasture; and now he was to be rewarded for this mistaken kindness by having a strip of territory snatched from him by a person—a fat, vulgar person—one he was sorry to call an Englishman—whom they had been foolish enough to elect as their chairman—a man who had written a book about himself—a common creature who claimed to be a descendant of Sir Francis Drake—a man who styled himself Captain because he had once stolen a fishing boat—a coarse bullying brute of a gasbag.
The chairman had been struggling to find breath for some moments. At last he found it, and released such thunders as had never been heard before. Even the Dismal Gibcat quailed before the volume of that tempest, while a few nervous parishioners left the schoolroom with a dazed look upon their faces. George detached himself from the wall and implored his uncle to be calm, but his words of warning were lost in that great tumult. The shocking nature of the scene was considerably enhanced by the fact that the Dismal Gibcat, for the first time within living memory, actually tried to smile.
"A right of way has existed time out of mind across that field. Sir Francis Drake and Queen Elizabeth walked there arm in arm," the Captain shouted, magnanimously ignoring the insults, and fighting for the people to his last gasp.
"Path warn't hardly wide enough, Captain," piped the Yellow Leaf, who was for accuracy at any price.
"I tell the chairman to his face he's a liar. He has never spoken a word of truth since he came to Highfield," cried the Dismal Gibcat.
Again the Captain opened his mouth, but no sounds came. He stretched out an arm, tried to leave the chair, then gasped, fell against George, and bore him to the floor. The leader of the people, the great reformer, the defender of liberty, lay motionless beneath the map of the British Empire like Cæsar at the foot of Pompey's statue; murdered by the Dismal Gibcat's smile in the village schoolroom, upon the fifth of April, in the seventy-fourth year of his age.
At the inquest it was shown by one of the discredited doctors that his heart had really given way a long time ago, and nothing but indomitable courage had preserved him in a state of nominal existence: he sought to impress it upon the jury that the Captain, from a medical point of view, had been a dead man for the last ten years; but, as everybody knew, this statement was made by an arrangement with the coroner to prevent a verdict of wilful murder against the Gibcat.