Page:The Last Chronicle of Barset Vol 1.djvu/77

Rh matter. He will not employ a lawyer, and he says that he should prefer that he should be sent for, if the law requires his presence at Silverbridge on Thursday." All this she wrote, as though she felt that she ought to employ a high tone in defending her husband's purpose; but she broke down altogether in the few words of the postscript. "Indeed, indeed I have done what I could!" Mr. Walker understood it all, both the high tone and the subsequent fall.

On the Thursday morning, at about ten o'clock, a fly stopped at the gate of the Hogglestock Parsonage, and out of it there came two men. One was dressed in ordinary black clothes, and seemed from his bearing to be a respectable man of the middle class of life. He was, however, the superintendent of police for the Silverbridge district. The other man was a policeman, pure and simple, with the helmet-looking hat which has lately become common, and all the ordinary half-military and wholly disagreeable outward adjuncts of the profession. "Wilkins," said the superintendent, "likely enough I shall want you, for they tell me the gent is uncommon strange. But if I don't call you when I come out, just open the door like a servant, and mount up on the box when we're in. And don't speak nor say nothing." Then the senior policeman entered the house.

He found Mrs. Crawley sitting in the parlour with her bonnet and shawl on, and Mr. Crawley in the arm-chair, leaning over the fire. "I suppose we had better go with you," said Mrs. Crawley directly the door was opened; for of course she had seen the arrival of the fly from the window.

"The gentleman had better come with us if he'll be so kind," said Thompson. "I've brought a close carriage for him."

"But I may go with him?" said the wife, with frightened voice. "I may accompany my husband. He is not well, sir, and wants assistance."

Thompson thought about it for a moment before he spoke. There was room in the fly for only two, or if for three, still he knew his place better than to thrust himself inside together with his prisoner and his prisoner's wife. He had been specially asked by Mr. Walker to be very civil. Only one could sit on the box with the driver, and if the request was conceded the poor policeman must walk back. The walk, however, would not kill the policeman. "All right, ma'am," said Thompson;—"that is, if the gentleman will just pass his word not to get out till I ask him."

"He will not! He will not!" said Mrs. Crawley.

"I will pass my word for nothing," said Mr. Crawley.