“Please, sir, we have leave from Mr Cookson, and I have found Tom Bowling—I mean Buller’s knife,” said the former, addressing Dr Jolliffe, who waved his hand towards Mr Elliot in silence, and frowned.
“Wait a bit, my lad, do not be flurried,” said the magistrate; “stand there. Let him be sworn,” he added to the clerk. And Simmonds took his first legitimate oath.
Then he told the simple story which we know. And when he had done Penryhn kissed the book in his turn and completed the chain of evidence. It was really quite sufficiently clear, that unless yet another boy had got out, and gone skating on the gravel-pits that night, taking Buller’s knife with him and losing it, that he himself had been there as he said; and therefore that he was not in the coppice, two miles on the other side of Weston. Lord Woodruff himself was convinced, and Buller was at once discharged, everybody shaking hands with him.
“And, Buller,” said Dr Jolliffe as they left the house, “as I hope that the anxiety you have been subjected to by your own unlawful action will prove sufficient punishment, I shall not take any further notice of your breaking out that night. Let it be a lesson to you, that you cannot engage in what is unlawful without assuming something which is common to all criminals, and running the risk of being mixed up with them.” Which was a beautifully mild preachee to take the place of floggee.
Tom Bowling received quite an ovation next day, and did not know what to do with his popularity. He was ready enough to skate now, but a thaw came, and there was no other chance afforded that term.
Chapter Twelve.
A Holiday Invitation.
A week before the Christmas holidays a boy named Gould came up to Crawley and said, “I wish you would come and stay with me a week or so this Christmas at my father’s place in Suffolk, Nugget Towers. The best of the shooting is over, the partridges being very wild by now, and it is not a pheasant country, as there are no woods to speak of. But there are a good many snipe down towards the river, so you had better bring your gun. Besides we will have a day’s partridge driving, for there are plenty, if you could only get at them. And there is a pack of foxhounds that meets about ten miles off once a week at least, and some harriers close by. I generally go out with the harriers. We can give you a mount; you do not ride above twelve stone I should say, do you?”