Chapter 66 - Page 2

(who was akin to him by marriage, and perhaps had an eye to the inevitable ailment of a man whose horse is ailing) backed up his daring scheme so strongly that the Admiral, anxious for the public good, had allowed this smithy to be set up here.

John Keatch was the man who established this, of the very same family (still thriving in West Middlesex) which for the service of the state supplied an official whose mantle it is now found hard to fill; and the blacksmith was known as "Jack Ketch" in the village, while his forge was becoming the centre of news. Captain Stubbard employed him for battery uses, and finding his swing-shutters larger than those of Widow Shanks, and more cheaply lit up by the glow of the forge, was now beginning, in spite of her remonstrance, to post all his very big proclamations there.

"Rouse up your fire, Ketch," he said that evening, as he stood at the door of the smithy, with half a dozen of his children at his heels. "Bring a dozen clout-nails; here's a tremendous piece of news!"

The blacksmith made a blaze with a few strokes of his bellows, and swung his shutter forward, so that all might read.

"GREAT AND GLORIOUS VICTORY. Twenty line-of-battle ships destroyed or captured. Lord Nelson shot dead. God save the King!"

"Keep your fire up. I'll pay a shilling for the coal," cried the Captain, in the flush of excitement. "Bring out your cow's horn, and go and blow it at the corner. And that drum you had to mend, my boy and girl will beat it. Jack, run up to the battery, and tell them to blaze away for their very lives."

In less than five minutes all the village was there, with the readers put foremost, all reading together at the top of their voices, for the benefit of the rest. Behind them stood Polly Cheeseman, peeping, with the glare of the fire on her sad pale face and the ruddy cheeks of her infant. "Make way for Widow Carne, and the young Squire Carne," the loud voice of Captain Zeb commanded; "any man as stands afront of her will have me upon him. Now, ma'am, stand forth, and let them look at you."

This was a sudden thought of Captain Tugwell's; but it fixed her rank among them, as the order of the King might. The strong sense of justice, always ready in Springhaven, backed up her right to be what she had believed herself, and would have been, but for foul deceit and falsehood. And if the proud spirit of Carne ever wandered around the ancestral property, it would have received in the next generation a righteous shock at descrying in large letters, well picked out with shade: "Caryl Carne, Grocer and Butterman, Cheese-monger, Dealer in Bacon and Sausages. Licensed to sell Tea, Coffee, Snuff, Pepper, and Tobacco."

For Cheeseman raised his head again, with the spirit of a true British tradesman, as soon as the nightmare of traitorous plots and