"Well, I will let you into one or two facts, Mr. Wilson, and then you may reason upon them, like a philosopher as you are."
"Like a Christian, as I would rather be," said Mark, parenthetically.
"Very well; like a Christian, as I am sure you are. I found a strong smell of whisky in one or two of the homesteads that I visited rather out of course; for Madam was tired, and I couldn't find in my heart to give her the whip—we've jogged on too long together for that; and so, as I said, I was rather out of time all through the round; and I found some of the lads saucy and quarrelsome. I knew what had made them so, for I saw by their ways that something stronger than the malt had got into their hot heads. However, I took it quietly and said nothing. But in coming along a little mountain road up out of yon dale and down into the next, I saw a cart ahead of me, with two men. When we came alongside, Madam pulled up as usual for a crack. But one of the men, with a lot of brooms on his back, said, 'Hush! or you'll waken the poor old mother in the cart.' 'What's to do with the old mother?' said I. 'She's had a stroke,' said he, and we are taking her as soft as we can over to the workhouse at Milnthorpe.' And so seeing the poor body lying all of a heap in the cart amongst the heather brooms, I just said, 'Poor soul and went my ways. But I'm thinking they were too many for old George Knibb; for Bella Hartley tells me that she came sharply upon them just after, in a turn of the lane, and saw them bargaining with some potters, who had another cart with them; and all of a sudden, they tossed the 'old women' out upon the ground, and she fell abroad into nothing but a bundle of clothes with an old bonnet upon the top of it."
Mr. Knibb here laughed heartily at his story; but everybody else looked startled, except Miles, who over-acted his part by violent bursts of explosive laughter.
The schoolmaster watched him with pain; and then said quietly, "After all, there is no fun in sin."
"Sin?" said Miles, looking fiercely at him, "I am not laughing at sin; it was only a capital joke—capital."
"It will be no joke to those men if I can catch them," resumed the exciseman; "but I am very much obliged to them for putting me on the true scent."
"The scent lies no further than the cart, however," remarked Miles; "and there's naught to prove there was anything but brooms in that, as far as I see."
"Stop a bit, my good friend; Bella Hartley's bright eyes made out more than that. She saw great heavy jars taken out from under the heather, and exchanged with the potters for empty ones; and then, from the other side of the wall, she watched them dressing up the 'old woman' again, and heard them calling her a 'witch,' because she was mounted on a broom, forsooth. And then, I hear, they took the road to the Old Man."
"And what are you minded to do now then?" asked the young farmer, in an oft hand manner.