“Bless me!” cried the Squire, starting up in a commotion—for he thought a great deal of his magisterial duties, and this was a very unusual call. “Dick Standish dying! What can he have to say? He has been nothing but a poacher all his life, poor fellow! And what has Westerbrook to do with him?”
“Well,” said Duffham, in his equable way, “it strikes me that what he wants to say may affect Fred. Perhaps Standish can clear him.”
“Clear Fred Westerbrook!—clear an iniquitous young man who could turn poacher and murderer! What next will you say, Duffham? Here, Johnny, get my hat and coat. Dear me! Take down a confession! I wonder whether there’ll be any ink there?”
“Let me go with you, sir!” I said eagerly. “I will take my little pocket-inkstand—and some paper—and—and—everything likely to be wanted. Please let me go!”
“Well, yes, you can, Johnny. Don’t forget a Bible. Ten to one if he has one.”
There were three brothers of these Standishes, Tom, Jim, and Dick, none of them particularly well-doing. Tom was no better than a sort of tramp, reappearing in the village only by fits and starts; Jim, who had married Mary Picker, was likewise given to roving abroad, until found and brought back by the parish; Dick, as the Squire phrased it, was nothing but a poacher, and made his home mostly with Jim and Mary. The cottage—a tumble-down lodgment that they did not trouble themselves to keep in repair—was at our end of the parish half-a-mile away, and we put our best feet foremost.
Dick lay upon the low bed in the loft. His illness had been very short and sharp; it was scarcely a week yet since he was taken with it. Duffham had done his best; but the man was dying. Jim Standish was off on one of his roving expeditions, neither the parish nor the public knowing whither.
The Squire sat by the bed, taking down the man’s confession at a small table, by the light of a small candle. I and Duffham stood to hear it; Mary Standish was sent down to the kitchen. What he said cleared Fred Westerbrook—Duffham had no doubt gathered so much before he came for the Squire.
Just what Fred had told us of the events of the night, Dick Standish confirmed now. He and other poachers were out, he said, his brother Tom for one. They had bagged some game, and were about to disperse when they encountered Mr. Fred Westerbrook. He stayed talking with them, walking the same way that they did, when lo! they all fell into the ambush planned by Gisby. A fight ensued; and he—he, Dick Standish, now speaking, conscious that he was dying—he fired his gun at them, and the shot entered Gisby. They ran away then and were not pursued; a gun was fired after them, and it struck his brother Tom, but not to hurt him very much: not enough to disable him. He and Tom made themselves scarce at once, before daylight; and they did not come back till danger was over, and Gisby about again. Old Jones and other folks had come turning the cottage inside out at the time in search of him (Dick), but his brother Jim swore through thick and thin that Dick had not been at home for ever so long. The Squire took all this down; and Dick signed it.
I was screwing the little inkstand up to return it to my pocket, when Mr. Holland entered, Mary Standish having sent for him. Leaving him with the sick man, we came away.