"Yes, sir, I know what your Reverence doth. Your Reverence never calleth law, but taketh horsewhip to the mans of us."
"Your memory is correct," he answered; "my usual course is to that effect. I have brought my heaviest whip this time, for your husband has shown arrogance. Can you show cause why he should not have it?"
"Yes, your Reverence, here it is. And God knows how we have scraped for it."
With the glow of triumph which a man's face hardly ever shows, but a woman's cannot be denied of, she spread before him all his rent upon an ancient tray, and every piece of it was copper. Thirty-six shillings she had to pay, and twenty-four times thirty-six was there for his Reverence to count. The hostess looked at him, with a chuckle brewing now under her apron strings, and ready to rise to her ample breast, and thence to her mouth, if expedient. But she mistook her customer.
"Woman," said Chowne, in his deep low voice, which had no anger in it; "I am tired of signing warrants."
"Warrants, your Worship! For what, if you please?"
"Warrants for thieves who are foisting sham Irish halfpennies on the public. I see no less than seven of them in this sterling stuff of yours. Three months at the treadmill now for yourself and your husband. Say no more. You have tried a trick. Tiverton jail for you both to-morrow."
And there, if you wanted either of them, you must go to find them, only two days afterward, according to what I was told of it. No Welsh gentleman would have dreamed of behaving to his tenants thus, for trying a little joke with him; but Chowne had no sense of any joke, unless himself began it.
Our three cannibals had been trembling at the sound of the Parson's voice, believing that he would drive them back, and feeling that they had no power to withstand his orders. But luckily we had made such a smoke—all our savages having taken to the use of tobacco gloriously—that when the Parson put his head in, as he must do everywhere, he drew it back in double-quick time, for he hated the weed as Old Nick does. And then after calling his groom as a witness to the Irish coinage, he made him tie the whole of the rent-money in his pocket-handkerchief, and off he set at a good round gallop to make out the warrant. You may depend upon it that we four were very soon off as well, and in the opposite direction, after subscribing a guinea among us to comfort the poor woman, who was sobbing her heart out at her mistake, and at the prospect (as seemed to me) of being confined, in more senses than one, within the walls of a prison. For some time I found myself much at a loss about harbouring my convoy; for though I could trust Jack Wildman—as I now began to call him—anywhere and with anything, this was not the case with the other two, who could never be kept from picking up small things that took their fancy. We were shaping a course for Narnton Court, where I intended to sling my own hammock, and Jack's as well, if agreeable; but I durst not offer to introduce Dick and Joe, for the cause aforesaid. Moreover, they had not yet acquired the manners of good society, which were no little insisted upon in Sir Philip Bampfylde's kitchen. Therefore I thought myself very clever, when a settlement of this question suddenly occurred to me.