Seeing his determination, Quaco returned to his side; as he did so, clamorously protesting against the imprudence of his protégé.
“Don’t like their looks,” muttered the Maroon, as he glanced apprehensively towards the horsemen. “It might be—by the Great Accompong it is!—that harpy Ravener, the overseer of Jess’ron. Golly! buckra, we’s in for it! No use tryin’ to ’scape ’em now.”
As Quaco finished speaking, the horsemen rode forward on the ground—one and all halting as they came to the spot where the pedestrians were standing.
“Here’s our fellow!” cried the bearded man at their head, whom Herbert easily identified. “Just dropped upon him, like a duck upon a June bug. Now, Mr Tharpey, do your duty! We’ll hear what this young gentleman’s got to say before the justice.”
“I arrest you, sir,” said the person appealed to as Mr Tharpey. “I am head constable of the parish—I arrest you in the name of the law.”
“On what charge?” demanded Herbert, indignantly.
“Mr Ravener here will bring the charge. I’ve got nothing to do with that part of it. You must come before the nearest justice. I reckon the nighest justice from here is the Custos Vaughan?”
This half-interrogatory of the constable was addressed, not to Herbert, but to his own followers. Though it was spoken rather in an undertone, the young man heard it with sufficient distinctness, and with very little complacency. To be carried back into the presence of his uncle—whom he had so lately defied—and in the character of a felon; to be brought, under such humiliating circumstances, before the eyes of his fair cousin—before the eye-glass of his late fellow-passenger—was a prospect that could not fail to be unpleasant.
It was a sort of relief, therefore, when Ravener—who appeared to use some guiding influence over the constable and his posse comitatus—overruled the suggestion that Mr Vaughan was the nearest magistrate, and claimed that honour for Jacob Jessuron, Esquire, of the Happy Valley.
After some discussion between the parties upon this moot legal point, the overseer’s opinion was adopted: and it was determined that the case should be carried before Justice Jessuron.