All this ended of course in Sam's arrest. He had himself seen from
the first that it would be so, and had bade his mother take comfort
and hold up her head. "It won't be for long, mother. I ain't got any
of the money, and they can't bring it nigh me." He was taken away
to be locked up at Heytesbury that night, in order that he might be
brought before the bench of magistrates which would sit at that place
on Tuesday. Squire Gilmore for the present committed him.
The parson remained for some time with the old man and his wife after
Sam was gone, but he soon found that he could be of no service by
doing so. The miller himself would not speak, and Mrs. Brattle was
utterly prostrated by her husband's misery.
"I do not know what to say about it," said Mr. Fenwick to his wife
that night. "The suspicion is very strong; but I cannot say that
I have an opinion one way or the other." There was no sermon in
Bullhampton Church on that Sunday afternoon.
CHAPTER XIII.
CAPTAIN MARRABLE AND HIS FATHER.
Only that it is generally conceived that in such a history as is this
the writer of the tale should be able to make his points so clear
by words that no further assistance should be needed, I should be
tempted here to insert a properly illustrated pedigree tree of the
Marrable family. The Marrable family is of very old standing in
England, the first baronet having been created by James I., and there
having been Marrables,--as is well known by all attentive readers of
English history,--engaged in the Wars of the Roses, and again others
very conspicuous in the religious persecutions of the children of
Henry VIII. I do not know that they always behaved with consistency;
but they held their heads up after a fashion, and got themselves
talked of, and were people of note in the country. They were
cavaliers in the time of Charles I. and of Cromwell,--as became men
of blood and gentlemen,--but it is not recorded of them that they
sacrificed much in the cause; and when William III. became king they
submitted with a good grace to the new order of things. A certain Sir
Thomas Marrable was member for his county in the reigns of George I.
and George II., and enjoyed a lucrative confidence with Walpole. Then
there came a blustering, roystering Sir Thomas, who, together with a
fine man and gambler as a heir, brought the property to rather a low
ebb; so that when Sir Gregory, the grandfather of our Miss Marrable,
came to the title in the early days of George III. he was not a rich
man. His two sons, another Sir Gregory and a General Marrable, died
long before the days of which we are writing,--Sir Gregory in 1815,
and the General in 1820. That Sir Gregory was the second of the
name,--the second at least as mentioned in these pages. He had been
our Miss Marrable's uncle, and the General had been her father, and
the father of Mrs. Lowther,--Mary's mother. A third Sir Gregory
was reigning at the time of our story, a very old gentleman with
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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