"No more it isn't!" said the dame with many children, and she breathed more freely.
"Maw be," said Gaffer Solomons, "some o' ye has been setting snares."
"What for?" said a stout sullen-looking young fellow, whom conscience possibly pricked to reply. "What for, when it beant the season? And if a poor man did find a hear in his pocket i' the hay time, I should like to know if ever a squire in the world would let un off wi' the stocks—eh?"
That last question seemed a settler, and the wisdom of Gaffer Solomons went down fifty per cent. in the public opinion of Hazeldean.
"Maw be," said the Gaffer, this time with a thrilling effect, which restored his reputation, "Maw be some o' ye ha' been getting drunk, and making beestises o' yoursels!"
There was a dead pause, for this suggestion applied too generally to be met with a solitary response. At last one of the women said, with a meaning glance at her husband, "God bless the Squire; he'll make some on us happy women, if that's all!"
There then arose an almost unanimous murmur of approbation among the female part of the audience; and the men looked at each other, and then at the Phenomenon, with a very hang-dog expression of countenance.
"Or, maw be," resumed Gaffer Solomons, encouraged to a fourth suggestion by the success of its predecessor, "Maw be some o' the Misseses ha' been making a rumpus, and scolding their goodmen. I heard say in my granfeythir's time, that arter old Mother Bang nigh died o' the ducking-stool, them 'ere stocks were first made for the women, out o' compassion like! And every one knows the Squire is a koind-hearted man, God bless un!"
"God bless un!" cried the men heartily; and they gathered lovingly round the Phenomenon, like heathens of old round a tutelary temple. But then rose one shrill clamor among the females, as they retreated with involuntary steps toward the verge of the green, whence they glared at Solomons and the Phenomenon with eyes so sparkling, and pointed at both with gestures so menacing, that Heaven only knows if a morsel of either would have remained much longer to offend the eyes of the justly enraged matronage of Hazeldean, if fortunately Master Stirn, the Squire's right-hand man, had not come up in the nick of time.
Master Stirn was a formidable personage—more formidable than the Squire himself—as, indeed, a squire's right-hand is generally more formidable than the head can pretend to be. He inspired the greater awe, because, like the stocks, of which he was deputed guardian, his powers were undefined and obscure, and he had no particular place in the out-of-door establishment. He was not the steward, yet he did much of what ought to be the steward's work; he was not the farm-bailiff, for the Squire called himself his own farm-bailiff; nevertheless, Mr. Hazeldean sowed and plowed, cropped and stocked, bought and sold, very much as Mr. Stirn condescended to advise. He was not the park-keeper, for he neither shot the deer nor superintended the preserves; but it was he who always found out who had broken a park-pale or snared a rabbit. In short, what may be called all the harsher duties of a large landed proprietor devolved by custom and choice upon Mr. Stirn. If a laborer was to be discharged, or a rent enforced, and the Squire knew that he should be talked over, and that the steward would be as soft as himself, Mr. Stirn was sure to be the avenging [Greek: angelos] or messenger, to pronounce the words of fate; so that he appeared to the inhabitants of Hazeldean like the Poet's Sæva Necessitas, a vague incarnation of remorseless power, armed with whips, nails, and wedges. The very brute creation stood in awe of Mr. Stirn. The calves knew that it was he who singled out which should be sold to the butcher, and huddled up into a corner with beating hearts at his grim footstep; the sow grunted, the duck quacked, the hen bristled her feathers and called to her chicks when Mr. Stirn drew near. Nature had set her stamp upon him. Indeed it may be questioned whether the great M. de Chambray himself, surnamed the Brave, had an aspect so awe-inspiring as that of Mr. Stirn; albeit the face of that hero was so terrible, that a man who had been his lackey, seeing his portrait after he had been dead twenty years, fell a-trembling all over like a leaf!