"Oh, ma'am, ma'am—if ever you cud help me get free—if ever ... oh, I—I'd sarve you all my life—I'd——"
"Hush," she said gently—"that's still in the future—and remember not to say 'sarve.'"
The Quarter Sessions were held early in December, and Robert's case came wedged between the too hopeful finances of a journeyman butcher and the woes of a farmer from Guldeford who had tried to drown himself and his little boy off the Midrips. Robert was sentenced to three years' imprisonment.
There was nothing remarkable about the trial, and nothing to be said against the sentence from the point of either justice or humanity. Ten years ago the boy would have been transported to Van Diemen's Land. The Bardons took it upon themselves to be outrageously sorry, and were rather mystified by Reuben's contemptuous attitude towards them and their regrets.
The evidence had been merely a repetition of that which had been given before the magistrate, though Bessie did not cry this time in the witness-box, and Robert in the dock was not dumb—on the contrary, he tried to explain to the Recorder what it felt like to have absolutely no money of one's own.
Reuben was present at the trial, and sitting erect, in his good town clothes, drew the public glance away both from the prisoner and the Recorder. Feeling was against him, and when in his summing-up Mr. Reeve remarked on the strangeness of a young man of Backfield's age having no money and being compelled to work without wages, a low murmur went round the court, which Reuben did not seem to hear. He sat very stiffly while the sentence was pronounced, and afterwards refused to see his son before he was taken away to Lewes.
"Poor feller, this 'ull be the breaking of him," said Vennal outside the Court-house.
"No more'n he deserves. He's a hard man," said Ditch.
"Thinks only of his farm and nothing of his flesh and blood," said old Realf.