The hall in which Petty Sessions were held at Wandsborough was not by its imposing dimensions calculated to impress anybody with the majesty of the law. It was small, low ceiled and badly lighted. Prisoner and witnesses, constables and magistrates’ clerk all seemed jumbled up together in the cramped space; while their worships themselves were only separated from the common herd by a long, narrow table. A most inconvenient room in fact, and times out of number had the Bench agitated for its enlargement, or better still, for the construction of another. All in vain. The justices had to go on sitting in the stuffy den, an infliction sufficient to bring them together in a state of ill-humour most unpropitious to the culprit. Even their genial and kind-hearted chairman, Colonel Neville, was wont to wax irritable under the circumstances – while constitutionally sterner stuff such as Mr Pagnell or General Dorrien was more than likely to err on the side of severity.
“Well, Devine, and what have you got to say for yourself?” said the chairman. There had been no defence set up; the prisoner had doggedly pleaded guilty. Indeed he could hardly have done otherwise, seeing that he had been caught red-handed in the act of taking one of the leverets out of the “hang,” while the other was found upon him. The head-keeper of Cranston and his subordinate had just been stating to the Bench under what circumstances they had made their capture; moreover, that the culprit was an excessively leery bird, who had long dodged the sharp watch they had kept upon him – and now the justices, having conferred together, were prepared to pass sentence.
“Please your warshups,” said the prisoner sullenly, “I’d bin out o’ work for nigh three weeks, and rent owin’, and nothin’ to keep the pot bilin’ at home. And I set the ‘hangs’ for rabbits, your warshups, which isn’t game, an’ I thowt as how that bit o’ furze were common land, and didn’t belong to nobody. And somehow when the hares got cotched, I took ’em, cos my gal had just come home, and there weren’t nothin’ in the house.”
An eager look came into the man’s swarthy hang-dog countenance. He was a heavy, powerfully built fellow of middle height, and his dark complexion and jet-black hair had gained for him the sobriquet “Gipsy Steve;” that, and the fact that no one knew where he came from, or anything about him. Among his own class he was popularly supposed to be “a man who had committed a murder,” for no reason apparently, unless it were his foreign and uncommon aspect, and a terribly evil look which would come over his dark features when crossed or roused.
Again the magistrates conferred together.
“Gaol’s the word,” said Mr Pagnell decisively. “No fine this time. The fellow’s an out-and-out knave, and now he’s trying to humbug us into the bargain. Why he’s been up numberless times before us for one thing or another, and twice already for poaching.”
“But he was acquitted the first time, and the second there was a doubt,” expostulated the clerical justice – a kindly-hearted man who, although his commission of the peace was congenial to a harmless vanity, disliked punishing his fellow men. “I think we might give him another chance.” So two of the trio being in favour of mercy, stern justice was outvoted.
“Now look here, Devine,” said Colonel Neville, “even if we believed every word of your story – which you can’t expect us to do, considering that you have already been up twice before us on similar charges – it would be no excuse, and you know that as well as we do. If you can’t get work here – and it’s your own fault if you can’t, because you quarrel with everyone who employs you – the best thing to do is to go to some other place, where you can. Anyhow, you’ve broken the law this time and we can’t overlook it, but we are going to give you another chance, though at first we had fully intended sending you to gaol. You will be fined ten shillings, that is five shillings for each act of poaching, and costs; in default a month’s hard labour.”
The prisoner’s countenance, which had lightened considerably at the words “another chance,” now fell again.
“Please, Kurnel,” he began, “I haven’t got five halfpence, let alone ten – ”
“Well, we can’t help that,” testily retorted Colonel Neville, who was feeling the effects of the close, stuffy room. “We have dealt with you very leniently as it is. Next case, Mr Inspector.”
So Stephen Devine was removed, and a yokel took his place, charged with cruelty to a horse, then came a couple of disputed paternity cases, the particulars of which, though highly instructive to the student of the manners and customs of the lower orders in rural districts, are in no wise material to this narrative; and so the business of the day proceeded, until at length the three magnates who had sacrificed themselves to the cause of justice in Wandsborough were emancipated and free to return to their respective homes.
“Upon my word, Neville, you do let those rascals down uncommonly easy,” observed Mr Pagnell to his brother magistrate, as the two rode homewards. “Poaching is the very thing we ought to stamp out ruthlessly in these days. Why, that ruffian Devine has simply got off scot free.”
“Poor devil,” answered the kind-hearted Colonel, who under the influence of fresh air and the prospects of no more Sessions for a month, had quite recovered his good humour. “Poor devil, I believe he’s been trying to keep square since his daughter came back. But he’ll have to do his month, for he’ll never be able to pay his fine.”
“Won’t he! You’ll see that he will, and we shall have him up before us again next Bench day. The fellow’s an irreclaimable scamp. Well, our ways part here. Good-bye.”
About half way between Cranston and Wandsborough, but in the latter parish, and in an angle formed by the footpath across the fields with a deep lane, stands a cottage – one of those picturesque, snug-looking nests which you shall see in no other country in the world – thatched, diamond-paned, and a bit of half garden, half orchard in front, and a background of elder trees and high hawthorn bushes. But, for all its external picturesqueness, an exploration of the interior of this abode would reveal a very poverty-stricken state of things. There is a neglected look about everything, and the rooms, bare of all but a few worthless sticks of furniture – too worthless even for the bailiffs or the pawnshop, seem to point eloquently to the sort of person their occupier would be – shiftless, hang-dog, ne’er-do-well, and not unfrequently drunken. It is the abode of Stephen Devine, alias Gipsy Steve, whose acquaintance we have just made.
At the moment when that worthy learns his fate in the Wandsborough Sessions room, there stands in the doorway of his abode a girl. Her dress, appearance, and the rough dusting-cloth in her hand seem to show that she has paused in the commonplace but laudable occupation of tidying up, and is there at the door for a breath of fresh air and a look round; and her coarseness of garb and surroundings notwithstanding, the girl would assuredly attract from the passer-by no mere casual glance, for she is of striking and uncommon beauty. Her almost swarthy complexion ought by all rules to go with jetty locks and dark flashing eyes, but it does not. The masses of hair crowning her well-carried head are light brown, just falling short of golden, and harmonise wonderfully with the smooth tawny skin, and her eyes are large, limpid and blue. The mouth, too, is not the least beautiful feature – full, red and sensuous. She is a tall girl, of splendid build and proportions, and the light, closely-fitting gown displays a figure which would have commanded a fabulous price in the slave-markets of old, and the easy, restful, leaning attitude as she stands in the doorway defines the swelling lines of her finely moulded form. A magnificent animal truly, and withal a dangerous one. Such is Lizzie Devine, the poacher’s daughter.
The passer-by referred to above would assuredly pronounce her to be no ordinary cottage girl, and he would be right. She had not inhabited the humble abode where we find her more than a fortnight; for she had only just returned from what the neighbours vaguely termed “foreign parts,” which vagueness neither Lizzie nor her father were disposed to reduce to definition. Here she was, anyhow, beneath “Gipsy Steve’s” poverty-stricken and highly disreputable roof, and the neighbours looked at her askance, as in duty bound. For this did Lizzie care not one rush. Her movements and pursuits were as mysterious as the antecedents of her father. The gossips hate mystery – therefore, said the gossips, she must have been after no good. Some