The Vicar of Bullhampton II

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ever, to the constable at Salisbury, begging the man to look to the young woman’s comfort, and offering to pay for any special privilege or accommodation that might be accorded to her. This occurred on the Saturday before the day on which Mary Lowther was taken up to look at her new home.

The Sunday passed by, with more or less of conversation respecting the murder; and so also the Monday morning. The Vicar had himself been summoned to give his evidence as to having found Sam Brattle in his own garden, in company with another man with whom he had wrestled, and whom he was able to substantiate as the Grinder; and, indeed, the terrible bruise made by the Vicar’s life-preserver on the Grinder’s back, would be proved by evidence from Lavington. On the Monday evening he was sitting, after dinner, with Gilmore, who had dined at the vicarage, when he was told that a constable from Salisbury wished to see him. The constable was called into the room, and soon told his story. He had gone up to Trotter’s Buildings that day after dinner, and was told that the bird had flown. She had gone out that morning, and Mrs. Stiggs knew nothing of her departure. When they examined the room in which she slept, they found that she had taken what little money she possessed and her best clothes. She had changed her frock and put on a pair of strong boots, and taken her cloak with her. Mrs. Stiggs acknowledged that had she seen the girl going forth thus provided, her suspicions would have been aroused; but Carry had managed to leave the house without being observed. Then the constable went on to say that Mrs. Stiggs had told him that she had been sure that Carry would go. “I’ve been a waiting for it all along,”

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she had said; “but when there came the law rumpus atop of the other, I knew as how she’d hop the twig.” And now Carry Brattle had hopped the twig, and no one knew whither she had gone. There was much sorrow at the vicarage; for Mrs. Fenwick, though she had been obliged to restrain her husband’s impetuosity in the matter, had nevertheless wished well for the poor girl; —and who could not believe aught of her now but that she would return to misery and degradation? When the constable was interrogated as to the need for her attendance on the morrow, he declared that nothing could now be done towards finding her and bringing her to Heytesbury in time for the magistrates’ session. He supposed there would be another remand, and that then she, too, would be—wanted.

But there had been so many remands that on the Tuesday the magistrates were determined to commit the men, and did commit two of them. Against Sam there was no tittle of evidence, except as to that fact that he had been seen with these men in Mr. Fenwick’s garden; and it was at once proposed to put him into the witness-box, instead of proceeding against him as one of the murderers. As a witness he was adjudged to have behaved badly; but the assumed independence of his demeanour was probably the worst of his misbehaviour. He would tell them nothing of the circumstances of the murder, except that having previously become acquainted with the two men, Burrows and Acorn, and having, as he thought, a spite against the Vicar at the time, he had determined to make free with some of the vicarage fruit. He had, he said, met the men in the village that afternoon, and had no knowledge of their business there. He had known Acorn

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more intimately than the other man, and confessed at last that his acquaintance with that man had arisen from a belief that Acorn was about to marry his sister. He acknowledged that he knew that Burrows had been a convicted thief, and that Acorn had been punished for horse stealing. When he was asked how it had come to pass that he was desirous of seeing his sister married to a horse-stealer, he declined to answer, and, looking round the Court, said that he hoped there was no man there who would be coward enough to say anything against his sister. They who heard him declared that there was more of a threat than a request expressed in his words and manner.

A question was put to him as to his knowledge of Farmer Trumbull’s money. “There was them as knew; but I knew nothing,” he said. He was pressed on this point by the magistrates, but would say not a word further. As to this, however, the police were indifferent, as they believed that they would be able to prove at the trial, from other sources, that the mother of the man called the Grinder had certainly received tidings of the farmer’s wealth. There were many small matters of evidence to which the magistrates trusted. One of the men had bought poison, and the dog had been poisoned. The presence of the cart at the farmer’s gate was proved, and the subsequent presence of the two men in the same cart at Pycroft Common. The size of the footprints, the characters and subsequent flight of the men, and certain damaging denials and admissions which they themselves had made, all went to make up the case against them, and they were committed to be tried for the murder. Sam, however, was allowed to go free, being served, however, with a subpœna to attend at the tri-

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al as a witness. “I will,” said he, “if you send me down money enough to bring me up from South Shields, and take me back again. I ain’t a coming on my own hook as I did this time; — and wouldn’t now, only for Muster Fenwick.” Our friends left the police to settle this question with Sam, and then drove home to Bullhampton.

The Vicar was triumphant, though his triumph was somewhat quelled by the disappearance of Carry Brattle. There could, however, be no longer any doubt that Sam Brattle’s innocence as to the murder was established. Head-Constable Toffy had himself acknowledged to him that Sam could have had no hand in it. “I told you so from the beginning,” said the Vicar. “We ‘as got the right uns, at any rate,” said the constable; “and it wasn’t none of our fault that we hadn’t ’em before.” But though Constable Toffy was thus honest, there were one or two in Heytesbury on that day who still persisted in declaring that Sam was one of the murderers. Sir Thomas Charleys stuck to that opinion to the last; and Lord Trowbridge, who had again sat upon the bench, was quite convinced that justice was being shamefully robbed of her due.

When the Vicar reached Bullhampton, instead of turning into his own place at once, he drove himself on to the mill. He dropped Gilmore at the gate, but he could not bear that the father and mother should not know immediately, from a source which they would trust, that Sam had been declared innocent of that great offence. Driving round by the road, Fenwick met the miller about a quarter of a mile from his own house. “Mr. Brattle,” he said, “they have committed the two men.”

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cause you have been bad,” say they who are not bad to those who are bad, “because you have hitherto indulged yourself with all pleasures within your reach, because you have never worked steadily or submitted yourself to restraint, because you have been a drunkard, and a gambler, and have lived in foul company, therefore now, —now that I have got a hold of you and can manipulate you in reference to your repentance and future conduct, —I will require from you a mode of life that, in its general attractions, shall be about equal to that of a hermit in the desert. If you flinch you are not only a monster of ingratitude towards me, who am taking all this trouble to save you, but you are also a poor wretch for whom no possible hope of grace can remain.” When it is found that a young man is neglecting his duties, doing nothing, spending his nights in billiard rooms and worse places, and getting up at two o’clock in the day, the usual prescription of his friends is that he should lock himself up in his own dingy room, drink tea, and spend his hours in reading good books. It is hardly recognised that a sudden change from billiards to good books requires a strength of character which, if possessed, would probably have kept the young man altogether from falling into bad habits. If we left the doors of our prisons open, and then expressed disgust because the prisoners walked out, we should hardly be less rational. The hours at Mrs. Stiggs’s house had been frightfully heavy to poor Carry Brattle, and at last she escaped.

It was half-past ten on the Monday morning when she went out. It was her custom to go out at that hour. Mr. Fenwick had desired her to attend the morning services at the Cathe-

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dral. She had done so for a day or two, and had then neglected them. But she had still left the house always at that time; and once, when Mrs. Stiggs had asked some question on the subject, she had replied almost in anger that she was not a prisoner. On this occasion she made changes in her dress which were not usual, and therefore she was careful to avoid being seen as she went; but had she been interrogated she would have persevered. Who had a right to stop her?

But where should she go? The reader may perhaps remember that once when Mr. Fenwick first found this poor girl, after her flight from home and her great disgrace, she had expressed a desire to go to the mill and just look at it, —even if she might do no more than that. The same idea was now in her mind, but as she left the city she had no concerted plan. There were two things between which she must choose at once, —either to go to London, or not to go to London. She had money enough for her fare, and perhaps a few shillings over. In a dim way she did understand that the choice was between going to the devil at once, —and not going quite at once; and then, weakly, wistfully, with uncertain step, almost without an operation of her mind, she did not take the turn which, from the end of Trotter’s Buildings, would have brought her to the Railway Station, but did take that which led her by the Three Honest Men out on to the Devizes road, —the road which passes across Salisbury Plain, and leads from the city to many Wiltshire villages, —of which Bullhampton is one.

She walked slowly, but she walked nearly the whole day. Nothing could be more truly tragical than the utterly purposeless tenour of her day, —and of her whole life. She had

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no plan, —nothing before her; no object even for the evening and night of that very day in which she was wasting her strength on the Devizes road. It is the lack of object, of all aim, in the lives of the houseless wanderers that gives to them the most terrible element of their misery. Think of it! To walk forth with, say, ten shillings in your pocket, —so that there need be no instant suffering from want of bread or shelter, — and have no work to do, no friend to see, no place to expect you, no duty to accomplish, no hope to follow, no bourn to which you can draw nigher, —except that bourn which, in such circumstances, the traveller must surely regard as simply the end of his weariness! But there is nothing to which humanity cannot attune itself. Men can live upon poison, can learn to endure absolute solitude, can bear contumely, scorn, and shame, and never show it. Carry Brattle had already become accustomed to misery, and as she walked she thought more of the wretchedness of the present hour, of her weary feet, of her hunger, and of the nature of the rest which she might purchase for herself at some poor wayside inn, than she did of her future life.

She got a lump of bread and a glass of beer in the middle of the day, and then she walked on and on till the evening came. She went very slowly, stopping often and sitting down when the road side would afford her some spot of green shade. At eight o’clock she had walked fifteen miles, straight along the road, and, as she knew well, had passed the turn which would have taken her by the nearest way from Salisbury to Bullhampton. She had formed no plan, but entertained a hope that if she continued to walk they would not catch her so as to

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