“Who have you there, Sir Steward?” asked his mistress, her eagle eye upon them and her clenched fist resting on the table.
“Madam, ’tis a vagrant caught in the third offence,” panted the steward, as he and the porter pulled the prisoner forward by main force.
Old Madam, as she was so often called, looked searchingly at the prisoner, a stout, ill-favored man dressed in ragged clothing and hanging his head, as if ashamed of his plight.
“How can you prove the charge?” Lady Crabtree asked sharply.
“Look at his slit ear, my lady,” said the steward; “his second offence of begging in this parish was here too, yet he hath the boldness to come here again, with his ear bored at that.”
“A very valiant beggar certainly,” she remarked, eying the vagrant with pitiless contempt. “You are a rogue,” she added, addressing the captive; “but what have you to say?”
“I asked but for a herring,” the man replied sullenly, looking up, and Betty saw that he was cross-eyed, with an evil cast of countenance.
“And will hang for a herring, fool!” said old Madam, harshly; “and it would be right, for with that body you should work or die. Take him to the justice,” she added to her steward, “and tell him I will pay for the rope.”
The two servants began to drag the prisoner back, and he offered no great resistance, seeming to accept his fate with sullen indifference; but Betty Carew rose from her seat.
“Surely, madam,” she cried, “you will not hang this poor man for asking for a herring?”