In the meantime, Mr. Drury, in the late autumn, had certainly a fine rick-yard and cattle-yard to show. His sheep were in fine condition, and he had an ample supply of turnips and mangel wurzel for winter feed. He had also sown several acres of carrots for his horses and cattle, then a matter of wonder and curiosity to his neighbours, as applied to that purpose, having before been thought of only for culinary use. With the working-men, the labourers of the neighbourhood, Mr. Drury was by no means in favour. He had brought with him a great variety of machinery, thrashing and winnowing machines, tedding and raking machines, which at that day, when such machinery was little known, were looked upon as all intended to supersede manual labour. They were beheld with an evil eye, and the indignant labourers were heard to wish that the earth would open and swallow up these godless and man-starving inventions. Besides this, Mr. Drury kept a very sharp eye on every man who worked for him. He had a bailiff, or headman, who timed all the men as they arrived in the morning, and noted the exact minute down, and a half, or even a quarter of an hour, on any day was deducted at the end of the week. He was always riding about on that tall roan horse of his, and so continually at their heels, or ready to drop upon them at any minute. They nick-named him Drury the Fire-eater, and wondered what they had done that the devil had sent him into their country.
The following spring a circumstance occurred which pre-eminently delighted not only the labourers, but the farmers around, and in no small degree Mr. Woodburn himself. Mr. Drury had written so much on the necessity of cleaning, dressing your fields, of extirpating to the utmost every species of couch-grass and weed, and that your growing crops should be as free from them as your gardens; he had made so many cutting remarks on the slovenliness of some of the neighbouring farms, and characterised the style of cultivation thereabout as lax, that it was with singular pleasure and merriment that they observed several of his corn crops, and one six-acre field in particular, as thickly mixed with docks as if the seed had purposely been sown half-and-half. There was a going and riding from all quarters to witness this wonderful sight. It was the talk at market, and Mr. Drury was accosted with much country wit on the occasion. “Is that,” asked farmers, “a part of your new plans, Mister Drury? Are these a new sort of carrots of yourn?” Carrots being just introduced by Mr. Drury, this was received with much laughter. Mr. Drury replied angrily, and in the words of Scripture, “An enemy hath done this.”
But who was this enemy! It was certain that Mr. Drury had his enemies in abundance amongst the labourers; but these men were too regularly engaged in hard work to collect such a quantity of dock seed, and to sow it so completely. There was a touch of ingenuity in it, too, which seemed beyond their habitual dulness. The suspicion turned in another direction.
In the autumn, on proceeding to get his potatoes, it was discovered by the men that the rows had been extensively plundered, by the potatoes being extracted from the sides of the rows, the tops being left standing, and the earth at the sides carefully put back and trampled hard. There was ingenuity there, too.
Mr. Drury not only set a man to watch at night, but he watched with him, and they soon captured, in the fact, a sort of half-witted, wandering vagabond fellow of Castleborough, named Ned King. This Ned King, a thin shangling fellow, dirty and ragged, and seldom without a pipe in his mouth, was reckoned only half-witted, but, at the same time, he had a cunning about him of no ordinary calibre. He was accustomed to ramble the streets, and early in the morning turn over with his feet or his hands, as carefully as a hen scratching in the chaff at a barn-door, the dust and scraps of paper swept out of the shops. It was said that he had occasionally recovered thus one-pound and even five-pound notes. It was certain that one day, in a main street, he was seen to stoop down and pick up a half-guinea in gold. A person close behind said, “That is mine!” “Oh!” said Ned, keeping the piece in his closed hand, “is yours a straight or a crooked one?” The man immediately imagined that it must be a crooked one, or so stupid a fellow would not have thought of it. “A crooked one, to-be sure,” said the man. “Then it is not yours,” added King, opening his hand, “for this is straight;” and the claimant disappeared amid the jeers of the people.
Ned being caught, begged hard to be let go, saying, he would make Mr. Drury amends; but such was not Mr. Drury’s creed. He was for the most summary punishment of all such depredators, and King was carried before the magistrates, and thence to the House of Correction for three months. The extraordinary crop of docks on Mr. Drury’s farm was no sooner talked of, than many people recollected seeing King here and there all round the country collecting, as he said, bird-seeds of different sorts; but they noticed him particularly gathering dock-seeds, which he said were for birds, but which nobody had ever known collected for such a purpose. It was shown by some of King’s neighbours that he had whole sack-bags of such seeds in his possession during the winter. But his having collected such seeds, and his having whole bags of them, did not prove that he had sown Mr. Drury’s corn-fields with them. There was no moral doubt whatever that he had done it; but it had been done so adroitly, that no one had ever seen him about Mr. Drury’s farm at night. He must have done it in midnights when every soul was fast asleep.
Mr. Drury had him up before the magistrates; and brought plenty of evidence of his having collected dock-seed for six or seven miles round, and of his having sacks full of it; but when the magistrates called on him to show how he had disposed of it, Ned grinned, and said, “How was he to know? He was always selling seeds and yarbs (herbs) to all sorts of people, and he did not know their names.” The old proverb of any fool taking a horse to water, and not all England being able to make him drink, was verified in Ned’s case. Nobody could convict him, and he was too shrewd to convict himself. The magistrates were compelled to dismiss him with a threat, and everybody said Mr. Drury had better have let Ned alone, he would do him some other ill-turn. And this soon appeared to be the case, for Mr. Drury’s field-gates were continually found wide open in a morning, and cattle and sheep let in or let out, and the greatest damage done. Sheep and cattle were found eating up and treading down the corn crops, and his horses were gone off, and were discovered in some neighbouring parish.
In this case the able and acute Mr. Trant Drury had found his match in the half-witted Ned King, the fool of Castleborough, much to the delectation of farmers and labourers all round Woodburn.
CHAPTER X.
WOODBURN AND ROCKVILLE AT WAR.