“Wants to wash his mouth out. So do I. But I’ll be hanged if I’ll go inside all the same.” Reasoning thus, Selsey Bill got down, for he saw a wisp of hay by the trough just fitted to dip in the water and cool the muzzle. But before he could hoist his long legs into the cart, as he positively meant to do, a buxom short woman had his arm enclasped with two red hands, and was looking up at him, with words of reproach, but a smile of good will. “It ain’t no nonsense, I tell you, Bill,” she exclaimed in reply to his soft remonstrance; “come in you shall, and have a word or two inside. I’ve got something particular on my mind. And you’ll never forgive yourself, if you goes on like this.” What could Tompkins do? His wife’s brother’s wife was Godmother to nearly half his children, and she had a bit of money of her own, and no children of her own to leave it to. “Well, only half a minute then,” he said, to ease his conscience; “and not a drop of beer, you know. Leastways, not till I’ve been to old Wisk, over yonner.” “Why, the old chap’s inside! Seems a Providence to me, because now you be bound to come in and see him. But I want to talk separate to you, Bill. You have got such a head you know, such a way up!” The landlady took Bill to her own room round the corner of the house, so that no one saw him, while Spanker was linked to the post and had some hay. And she told him such a story that his little black eyes, which tried to look at one another over his great nose, twinkled, and flashed, and were full of puzzled wrath. Then she brought him a pint of mild ale, for she knew that his mind worked slowly, and required to be refreshed. “Never heered tell of such a job in my born days. Couldn’t ’a believed it, if it wasn’t you, Eliza. You was always truth itself. But how can you be sartin the young girl as told you is quite right in her mind?” “Well, I can’t be certain, Bill, for she is a stranger about here. But she looks right enough, and she was genuine flustrated. And more than that, there’s several things that comes to back her up like. What shall we do, Bill? That’s the point.” “Sure enough, so it is. What does Teddy say to it?” “Well, you know what he is. If he see a murder doing, I believe he’d shut his eyes and ears, and whip round the corner. And besides that, he is never no good after two o’clock; and I only heard of this about an hour ago. So, to tell you the plain truth, I haven’t said a word about it. And it’s no good to tell him nothing till to-morrow morning. Not that he takes so very much, you know. But his constitution is that queer. If you had not come by, I was just making of my mind up to put on my shawl, and step off for the police. Though it’s three miles to go, and then most likely never find them.” “And if you did, I don’t believe they’d take a bit of notice. Leastways, not, if they was disposition’d same as ours. Got never a Justice of the peace round here, some countries they calls them a Magistrate?”