“But suppose he comes in for something worse?”
“How should he? They cannot prove that he was in the coppice when he was about three miles in the opposite direction, you know. Now, if I were once suspected, they would find out that I constantly went to Slam’s, who finds agents to sell the game for all the poachers round, and some of the keepers too, if the truth were known, and that I had been seen in Marriner’s company; who is considered to make a regular income out of Lord Woodruff’s pheasants, and they would have some grounds to go upon. But Buller is all right.”
But though he spoke like this to quiet Edwards, Saurin did not care whether Buller got into serious trouble or not. He was a friend of Crawley’s, had seconded him in the fight, and given him advice which contributed as much as anything else to Saurin’s defeat. If he were expelled and sent to prison it would not break his (Saurin’s) heart. The only fear was that if Edwards blabbed—and he was so weak that he could not be absolutely trusted—fellows would think it horribly mean to let Buller be punished unjustly for what he himself had done. And on this account, and this account only, he hoped that Buller would get off.
Mr Elliot, the magistrate, lived at Penredding, the village where Mr Rabbits had gone to lecture, and thither Tom Buller was driven in a close fly, the doctor accompanying him. Lord Woodruff, who had come to Weston on horseback, rode over separately. Mr Elliot was a man of good common sense, though his opinions were not quite so weighty as his person, which declined to rise in one scale when fifteen stone was in the other. He was a just man also, though perhaps he was less dilatory in attending to the wishes of a member of one of the great county families than he might be in the case of a mere nobody. If a rich man and a poor one had a dispute, he considered that the presumption was in favour of the former, but he did not allow this prejudice to influence him one iota in the teeth of direct evidence.
Just after the fly had left Weston some snow flakes began to fall. “Ah!” thought Tom, “it may snow as hard as it pleases now. I have had a good turn at any rate. I was not able to do the outside edge when the frost set in, and now I can cut an eight. I wish, though, I could keep my balance in the second curl of those threes. I must practise going backwards, and stick to that next time I have a chance.”
Dr Jolliffe, who saw that he was absorbed in reflection, thought that he was dwelling upon the serious nature of the position in which he found himself, and would have been amused if he could have read the real subject of his meditations. But he could not do that, so he read the proof-sheets of his new treatise on the digamma. The snow fell thicker, and by the time they reached Penredding the country was covered with a white sheet.
Mr Elliot, who had been warned of their coming, was ready to receive them, and Lord Woodruff came forward with an inspector of rural police, and told his story, which was written down by a clerk and read over. Then the whole party set out on their travels again and drove to the cottage of the wounded gamekeeper, where they were received by a young woman, who had been crying her eyes red, and to the folds of whose dress two little children clung, hiding their faces therein, but stealing shy glances now and then at the quality, and the awful representative of the law, who had come to visit them.
“The doctor has told us that it would do your husband no harm to say before me what he has already told Lord Woodruff,” said Mr Elliot to her. “I was rejoiced to hear that he is doing so well. It was a most shameful, brutal, and cowardly attack, and we are most anxious that the offender should be brought to justice.”
“Yes, sir,” said the woman. “Doctor thinks it may quiet him like to have his dispositions took, and then he may go to sleep.”
“Exactly. Will you be so kind as to tell him that we are here?”