Great Britain -- History -- 18th century -- Fiction; Short stories, English; West Riding of Yorkshire (England) -- Fiction
Parish of Horwick, to be paid by the Constables.” And for the account of
how these rewards were never paid we must leave the documents for a
moment, and turn to the fireside gossip of the weavers and sheepmasters
in the ingles on winter nights.
From that source, and similar ones, we learn how Mish Murgatroyd lay
hidden in the bellpit until after the advancing fire had roared away
above his head, and the soldiers had retired before the flames. Three
days in all (so the story went) he stayed there, and, effecting his
escape at the end of that time, he returned to his home and followed his
ordinary calling--which, to be sure, was little enough good. Maybe he
did not know they were provided with his name; if he did, he showed
uncommon coolness; for shortly afterwards he went to Horwick Thursday
market, got rather more than market-drunk, and set off at six o’clock in
the evening with (however he came by them) two heavy budgets of cloth,
one under either arm, the straps about his neck. He reached Wadsworth,
and took a sheep-track up the Scout; but near the top his foot, or the
drink, or both, betrayed him. He slipped and rolled down. He did not
roll any great distance, for he lodged against two mountain-ash trees,
already reddening with berries. His fetching up against them was the end
of Mish Murgatroyd. The heavy budgets bounded forward over an edge; they
stopped with a horrible jerk; Mish was hanged at his own cost instead of
at that of his country; and the hangman himself could not have done the
job more neatly. That was a stroke of luck for the country, for there is
no sense in wasting money.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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