Deep Moat Grange

by S. R. Crockett

My wife was most difficult as to my riding alone, but if a man is to take account of the whim-whams of his women-folk, he will have time for little else. So I gave Joseph and Kingsman sufficient directions and elaborate instructions to pass them over till my return, and so parted.

There is nothing to note on the journey to Longtown. I fell into converse with several farmers and made arrangements with one to take his young pigs at valuation—which I judged a good affair to me, his valuator being largely indebted to me in the line of bone manures and feeding stuffs.

But beyond that nothing, and even that affair was quite in the course of business, though it has not yet matured.

For, perhaps owing to the unsettled state of the country, the pigs have been anxious-minded and run to legs, utterly refusing to put on flesh, which, as I understand it, is the first duty of pig. I came somewhere across a book by Thomas Carlyle in which he stated this somewhat strongly. I was much struck by the strength and precision of the argumentation, and wished that at all times he had thought fit to write with similar clearness. There is no doubt that the man had the ability. I have read worse newspaper articles.

I found my man without great difficulty, and duly "riested" or arrested the moneys due to me, in the hands of Mr. Lightbody the auctioneer, taking the said Mr. Lightbody's cheque on a Thorsby bank—both as more portable, and also to give that sound and well-considered man time to settle with the buyers of the Cairney cattle—lots A, B, and C, on which I had first charge.

Now, I am not a man ever to halt at markets, or to drink in public places—more, that is, than to clinch a bargain, as an honest man ought, neither with stinting nor with offensive liberality. I even made it up with Cairney, though at first, of course, he was neither to hold nor to bind. He threatened to bring me up "before the fifteen" for damage to his credit. But I pointed out that nothing hurts a man's credit so much as the habit of not paying his debts. Whereupon he calmed a little, and said he, "I'll wager that it was old Hobby who put you on to this!" To which, naturally, I made no reply, letting him think just what he would.

At three o'clock I had Dapple saddled. For it being the winter season, I judged that late enough to be travelling over so wild a country. But having done harm to no one, and carrying no sums of money, I saw no reason for fear.

At the half-way little hedge inn, for once in my life I lighted down and called for a bowl of soup, but could only get coffee, and that without milk—which proves the improvidence of these people. For Crewe Moss would easily have pastured a hundred cows, though it would most likely happen that an odd one might get laired in the soft places now and then. But not to have so much as a drop of milk and on Crewe Moss! Lamentable! So I told the people what I thought of them, mounted Dapple, and came my ways.

I had gone, perhaps, three miles, and was skirting the woods adjoining the property of Mr. Stennis, when, as I passed under some high trees a noose dropped about my neck. The mare passed on, and I was left dangling as neatly as if the hangman had done it. Happily for me the cord had descended lower than my neck on one side, and I was caught under the left armpit. But there I swung and turned all the same, shouting manfully for help. I could observe as I wheeled about, for all the world like a scarecrow in a bean field, some one in the act of catching Dapple and tying her to a tree.

Then the man—a long-limbed, ugly-mugged fellow, with corkscrew curls exactly like the old maids when I was young—came back, and, letting me down, wrapped me carefully in a coil of rope till I could move neither hand nor foot. I know him now to be Mad Jeremy, for long chief agent in the doubtful affairs of Mr. Hobby Stennis.