He was obliged to confess to his shame. He stood there before the condemning faces around, and acknowledged that the chastisement spoken to was a fact--that he _had_ laid his horsewhip on the shoulders of Rupert Trevlyn. He was pressed for the why and wherefore--Chattaway was no favourite with his brother-magistrates, and they did not show him any remarkable favour--and he had further to confess that the provocation was totally inadequate to the punishment. "State your grounds for charging your nephew, Rupert Trevlyn, with the crime," said the Bench. "There is not the slightest doubt that he did it in a fit of passion," said Mr. Chattaway. "There was no one but him in the rick-yard, so far as I saw, and he had a lighted torch in his hand. This torch he dropped for a moment, but I suppose picked it up again." "It is said that James Sanders was also in the rick-yard; and the torch was his." "I did not see James Sanders. I saw only Rupert Trevlyn, and he had the torch in his hand when I went up. Not many minutes after I quitted the rick-yard the flames broke out." Apparently this was all Mr. Chattaway knew of the actual facts. The man Hatch was called, and testified to the fact that Jim Sanders was in the rick-yard. Bridget, the kitchenmaid, in a state of much tremor, confirmed this, and confessed she was there subsequently with Jim, that he had a torch, and they saw the flames break out. She related her story pretty circumstantially, winding up with the statement that Jim told her Mr. Rupert had set it on fire. "Stop a bit, lass," interrupted Mr. Peterby. "You have just stated to their worships that Jim Sanders flew off the moment he saw the flames burst forth, never stopping to speak a word. _Now_ you say he told you it was Mr. Rupert who fired it. How do you reconcile the contradiction?" "He had told me first, sir," answered the girl. "He said he saw the master horsewhip Mr. Rupert, and Mr. Rupert in his passion caught up the torch which had fell, thrust it into the rick, and then leaped over the palings and got away. Jim pulled the torch out of the rick, and all the hay that had caught, as he thought; he told me all this when he was showing me the puppy. I suppose a spark must have been left in to smoulder, unknown to him." "Now don't you think that you and he and the torch and the puppy, between you, managed to get the spark there, instead of its having 'smouldered,' eh, girl?" sarcastically asked Mr. Peterby. Bridget burst into tears. "No, I am sure we did not," she answered. "Don't you likewise think that this pretty little bit of news regarding Mr. Rupert may have been a fable of Mr. Jim's invention, to excuse his own carelessness?" went on the lawyer. "I am certain it was not, sir," she sobbed. "When Jim told me about Mr. Rupert, he never thought the rick was on fire."