The Culprit - Page 2

household were brought to the doors and windows,
and the squire to the portal. An audience was demanded by Ready-Money
Jack, who had detected the prisoner in the very act of sheep-stealing on
his domains, and had borne him off to be examined before the squire, who
is in the commission of the peace.

A kind of tribunal was immediately held in the servants' hall, a large
chamber with a stone floor and a long table in the centre, at one end of
which, just under an enormous clock, was placed the squire's chair of
justice, while Master Simon took his place at the table as clerk of the
court. An attempt had been made by old Christy to keep out the gipsy
gang, but in vain; and they, with the village worthies, and the
household, half filled the hall. The old housekeeper and the butler were
in a panic at this dangerous irruption. They hurried away all the
valuable things and portable articles that were at hand, and even kept a
dragon watch on the gipsies, lest they should carry off the house clock
or the deal table.

Old Christy, and his faithful coadjutor, the gamekeeper, acted as
constables to guard the prisoner, triumphing in having at last got this
terrible offender in their clutches. Indeed I am inclined to think the
old man bore some peevish recollection of having been handled rather
roughly by the gipsy in the chance-medley affair of May-day.

Silence was now commanded by Master Simon; but it was difficult to be
enforced in such a motley assemblage. There was a continued snarling and
yelping of dogs, and, as fast as it was quelled in one corner, it broke
out in another. The poor gipsy curs, who, like errant thieves, could not
hold up their heads in an honest house, were worried and insulted by the
gentleman dogs of the establishment, without offering to make
resistance; the very curs of my Lady Lillycraft bullied them with
impunity.

The examination was conducted with great mildness and indulgence by the
squire, partly from the kindness of his nature, and partly, I suspect,
because his heart yearned towards the culprit, who had found great
favour in his eyes, as I have already observed, from the skill he had at
various times displayed in archery, morris-dancing, and other obsolete
accomplishments. Proofs, however, were too strong. Ready-Money Jack told
his story in a straightforward independent way, nothing daunted by the
presence in which he found himself. He had suffered from various
depredations on his sheep-fold and poultry-yard, and had at length kept
watch, and caught the delinquent in the very act of making off with a
sheep on his shoulders.

Tibbets was repeatedly interrupted, in the course of his testimony, by
the culprit's mother, a furious old beldame, with an insufferable