"Tell me what he saw, or thought he saw. He is not the man to tell a lie. Whatever he said, he believed in."
Fox spoke without any anger now; for this could be no scheme of his enemies.
"You are wonderful fair, sir;" said Sergeant Jakes. "You deserve to have all above board; and you shall have it."
Tired as he was, and beginning to feel poorly at the threat of medicine, the old soldier told the blacksmith's tale, with as few variations as can contrive to keep themselves out of a repetition. Fox began to see that the case was not by any means so easy, as he first supposed. Here was evidence direct against him, from an impartial witness; a tale coherent, and confirmed by facts independent of it, a motive easily assigned; and the public eager to accept it, after recent horrors. But he was young, and warm of faith in friendship, candour, and good-will; or (if the worst should come to the worst) in absolute pure justice.
"It will not take long to put this to rights," he said, when the Sergeant had finished his account. "No one can really have believed it, except that blockhead of a blacksmith. He was in a blue funk all the time, and no need to be ashamed of it. There are two people I must see to-night—Mr. Mockham, and that Joe Crang himself. I shall borrow a horse from Walter Haddon; my young mare has had enough of it. I shall see how the Parson looks before I go. Now go to bed, Sergeant, as I told you. To-morrow you will find all the wiseacres saying, what fools they have made of one another."
But the veteran shook his head, and said, "If a cat has nine lives, sir; a lie has ninety-nine."
CHAPTER XII. A FOOL'S ERRAND.
Mr. John Mockham was a short stout man, about five or six and forty years of age, ruddy, kind-hearted, and jocular. He thought very highly of Jemmy Fox, both as a man and a doctor; moreover he had been a guest at Foxden, several times, and had met with the greatest hospitality. But for all that, he doubted not a little, in his heart—though his tongue was not allowed to know it—concerning the young doctor's innocence of this most atrocious outrage. He bore in mind how the good and gentle mother had bemoaned (while Jemmy was in turn-down collars) the very sad perversity of his mind, towards anything bony and splintery. Nothing could keep him from cutting up, even when his thumb was done round with oozing rag, anything jointed or cellular; and the smell of the bones he collected was dreadful, even in the drawer where his frilled shirts werelaid.
The time was not come yet, and happily shall never—in spite of all morbid suisection—when a man shall anatomise his own mind, and trace every film of its histology. Squire Mockham would have laughed any one to scorn, who had dared to suggest, that in the process of his brain, there was any connexion of the frills in Jemmy's drawer with the blacksmith's description of what he had seen; and yet without his knowledge, it may even have been so. But whatever his opinion on the subject was, he did not refuse to see this young friend; although he was entertaining guests, and the evening was now far advanced.