Weevil shuffled after her, muttering to himself: "You have done it, Abel-Cain. You must keep it up. You must hold the Brute off her somehow, or she may have to go out, into the windy moonlight, into the lonely life." CHAPTER XIX ABOUT THE GOOD RIGHT HAND OF FELLOWSHIP One of the creeping-things to be crushed at the forthcoming Assizes was Brightly. Ju had been already stamped out of existence, and it was meet and right that the little man should follow her example, and be placed behind some stone walls where it would be impossible for him to drag lusty farmers from their horses and half-murder them for the sake of their clothes. Brightly had not long to wait in prison. Exeter put on the full panoply of the law during the first week of November; scarlet and gold were flourished; trumpeters and a special preacher brayed; bells clanged, the small grocer and the candle-maker were summoned to serve on the jury, to fail not at their peril, lawyers buzzed everywhere, and a lot of money was spent just because Brightly and a few poor yokels had misconducted themselves. It was a curious sort of net, this Assize net; it was constructed and cast in such a manner that it permitted a lot of coarse fish and golden carp to escape through its meshes, while all the little tadpoles and mud-grubbers were caught and held. One of the coarse fish to swim into the judicial circuit was Pendoggat. He came to Exeter, partly that he might spend a portion of the capital of the Nickel Mining Company, and partly that he might visit the Guildhall to see sinners punished. Pendoggat had a keen sense of justice and a certain amount of dull humour. The Assizes represented to him a foreshadowing of the fiery pleasures of Hell--they were a pleasure to his mind because he was secure from them--and it amused him to think that another man was going to suffer for his wrongdoing. The idea that he was a sinner had never occurred to him. He had stripped Chegwidden, and flung him into the furze, because the wind had swept upon him, urging him to persecute the unconscious man, and he had obeyed. He had not robbed Chegwidden, nor had he stolen his clothes; and that was the principal charge against Brightly. If he had stood up in court, and confessed that he had dragged the farmer from his horse and stolen his clothes, he would have been telling a lie, which would have been painful to him. Brightly was not charged with finding Chegwidden unconscious, stripping the clothes from him, and throwing them down a wheal. Had that been the charge against him Pendoggat would probably have recognised that the purveyor of rabbit-skins was a good Christian, who had learnt the great principles of the gospel, and was willing to sacrifice himself for another. The mind of Pendoggat when it turned towards theology became incomprehensible.