,
the riders came upon a remarkable group in high debate over a
donkey--Lady Latimer, Gampling the tinker, and the rural policeman. My
lady instantly summoned Mr. Carnegie to her succor in the fray, which,
to judge from her countenance and the stolid visage of the emissary of
the law, was obstinate. It appeared that the policeman claimed to arrest
the donkey and convey him to the pound. The dry and hungry beast had
been tethered by his master in the early morning where a hedge and
margin of sward bordered the domain of Admiral Parkins. Uninstructed in
modern law, he broke loose and strayed along the green, cropping here
and there a succulent shoot of thorn or thistle, until, when
approaching repletion, he was surprised by the policeman, reprimanded,
captured, and led ignominiously towards the gaol for vagrant animals--a
donkey that everybody knew.

"He's took the innicent ass into custody, and me he's going to summons
and get fined," Gampling exclaimed, his indignation not abated by the
appearance of another friend upon the scene, for a friend he still
counted the doctor, though he persisted in his refusal to mend his
kettles and pots and pans.

"Is not this an excess of zeal, Cobb?" remonstrated Mr. Carnegie.
"Suppose you let the ass off this time, and consider him warned not to
do it again?"

"Sir, my instructions is not to pass over any infringement of the new
h'act. Straying is to be put down," said Cobb stiffly.

"This here ass have earned his living honest a matter of eight year, and
naught ever laid agen his character afore by high nor low," pleaded
Gampling, growing pathetic as authority grew more stern. "Her ladyship
and the doctor will speak a good word for him, and there's others as
will."

"Afore the bench it may be of vally and go to lowering the fine," said
the invincible exponent of the law; "I ain't nothing to do with that."

"I'll tell you where it is, Cobb," urged Gampling, swelling into anger
again. "This here ass knows more o' nat'ral justice than the whole
boiling o' new h'acts. He'd never be the man to walk into her ladyship's
garden an' eat up her flowerbeds: raason why, he'd get a jolly good
hiding if he did. But he says to hisself, he says, when he sees a nice
bite o' clover or a sow-thistle by the roadside: "This here's what's
left for the poor, the fatherless, and the widder--it ain't much, but
thank God for small mercies!'--an' he falls to. Who's he robbed, I
should like to know?"