That evening, after she was gone, and while I was very dull about it, finding poor Bunny so slow and stupid, and nothing to keep me wide awake--there I was bound to be wide awake, more than at Petty Sessions even, when mine enemies throng against me. For almost before I had smoked two pipes, or made up my mind what to do with myself, finding a hollow inside of me, the great posting-coach from Bridgend came up, with the sun setting bright on its varnish, and at my very door it stopped. Next to the driver sat a constable who was always unjust to me; and from the inside came out first Justice Anthony Stew of Pen Coed, as odious and as meddlesome a justice of the peace as ever signed a warrant; and after him came a tall elderly gentleman, on whom I had never set eyes before, but I felt that he must be a magistrate. CHAPTER XXI. CROSS-EXAMINATION. Those justices of the peace, although appointed by his Majesty, have never been a comfort to me, saving only Colonel Lougher. They never seem to understand me, or to make out my desires, or to take me at my word, as much as I take them at theirs. My desire has always been to live in a painfully loyal manner, to put up with petty insults from customers who know no better, leaving them to self-reflection, and if possible to repentance, while I go my peaceful way, nor let them hear their money jingle, or even spend it in their sight. To be pleased and trustful also with the folk who trust in me, and rather to abandon much, and give back twopence in a shilling, than cause any purchaser self-reproach for having sworn falsely before the bench,--now, if all this would not do, to keep me out of the session-books, can any man point out a clearer proof of the vicious administration of what they call "justice" around our parts? And when any trumpery case was got up, on purpose to worry and plague me, the only chance left me, of any fair-play, was to throw up my day's work, and wear out my shoes in trudging to Candleston Court, to implore that good Colonel Lougher to happen to sit on the bench that day. When those two gentlemen alighted from that rickety old coach, and ordered that very low constable to pace to and fro at the door of my house, boldly I came out to meet them, having injured no man, nor done harm of any sort that I could think of, lately. Stew came first, a man of no lineage, but pushed on by impudence; "Anthony Stew can look you through," an English poacher said of him; and this he tried always to do with me, and thoroughly welcome he was to succeed.