e.

Sir Thomas on a hard kitchen chair began to talk. He said he had 'stood
enough of being photographed like a wild beast,' and expressed loud
regret that he had not killed 'that man,' who was 'conspiring with the
sergeant to laugh at him.'

''Ad you ever seen 'im before, Sir Thomas?' the sergeant asked.

'No! But it's time an example was made here. I've never seen the sweep
in my life.'

I think it was Bat Masquerier's magnetic eye that recalled the past to
him, for his face changed and his jaw dropped. 'But I have!' he groaned.
'I remember now.'

Here a writhing man entered by the back door. He was, he said, the
village solicitor. I do not assert that he licked Woodhouse's boots, but
we should have respected him more if he had and been done with it. His
notion was that the matter could be accommodated, arranged and
compromised for gold, and yet more gold. The sergeant thought so too.
Woodhouse undeceived them both. To the sergeant he said, 'Will you or
will you not enter the charge?' To the village solicitor he gave the
name of his lawyers, at which the man wrung his hands and cried, 'Oh,
Sir T., Sir T.!' in a miserable falsetto, for it was a Bat Masquerier of
a firm. They conferred together in tragic whispers.

'I don't dive after Dickens,' said Ollyett to Bat and me by the window,
'but every time _I_ get into a row I notice the police-court always
fills up with his characters.'

'I've noticed that too,' said Bat. 'But the odd thing is you mustn't
give the public straight Dickens--not in My business. I wonder why
that is.'

Then Sir Thomas got his second wind and cursed the day that he, or it
may have been we, were born. I feared that though he was a Radical he
might apologise and, since he was an M.P., might lie his way out of the
difficulty. But he was utterly and truthfully beside himself. He asked
foolish questions--such as what we were doing in the village at all, and
how much blackmail Woodhouse expected to make out of him. But neither
Woodhouse nor the sergeant nor the writhing solicitor listened. The
upshot of their talk, in the chimney-corner, was that Sir Thomas stood
engaged to appear next Monday before his brother magistrates on charges
of assault, disorderly conduct, and language calculated, etc. Ollyett
was specially careful about the language.

Then we left. The village looked very pretty in the late light--pretty
and tuneful as a nest of nightingales.

'You'll turn up on Monday, I hope,'