“Hiram Carewe, sir, a man of forty-one, a gypsy fellow, against whom more than one could bear witness he was a confirmed poacher, as was his precious son, James Carewe, who is now starting his five years. But you never heard anything like the savage way in which he turned upon Sir Philip when he saw him in the witness-box. ‘You murdered my father,’ he shouted out. ‘You, Philip Cranstoun, liar, and coward! Your men are liars and perjurers, too. You know right well what father and I came to the Chase for, and that we never struck a blow but in self-defence. We hadn’t a weapon about us but our clasp-knives, and after you’d murdered my father you were three to one against me, and I had to fight for my life. You’re a perjurer and a villain, but I swear I’ll be even with you yet.’ He was hushed down, of course, and when the doctors had proved how bad the gamekeeper’s wounds were, he being dreadfully hacked about the neck and shoulders by James Carewe’s knife, the jury found him guilty of unlawfully wounding with intent to kill, and gave him five years, as served him right. But, lor’, sir, that wasn’t the end of it, for poor Sir Philip, who in his evidence said all he could to screen the man, I’m sure, as soon as he was leaving the building to get on his horse, as his groom was holding for him, up comes a ragged, wicked-looking, old gray-haired gypsy woman, all yellow and wrinkled, with a pair of eyes like burning coals, so William’s wife told me. ‘Where’s my son’s murderer?’ she yelled. ‘Where’s the man who’s killing my Hiram’s child?’ Up she come close to Sir Philip, before any one could stop her, and flings in his face a handful of mud she picked up in the roadway. Sir Philip he swears, and the witch she shrieks with laughter. Then suddenly she stops, lifts her finger, and rolls out the most awful curse a body ever heard. William’s wife said it made her cold to her bones to listen. The woman cursed his whole life and all that he did. He should lose wife and child, she said, his name should become a scoff and a byword throughout the land; he should be wretched at home and hated abroad; no one should ever love him again; and she would live, if it was for fifty years, to laugh at him, as he lay dying in a miserable hovel, deserted and alone.