Ned being caught, begged hard to be let go, saying, he would make Mr. Drury amends; but such was not Mr. Drury’s creed. He was for the most summary punishment of all such depredators, and King was carried before the magistrates, and thence to the House of Correction for three months. The extraordinary crop of docks on Mr. Drury’s farm was no sooner talked of, than many people recollected seeing King here and there all round the country collecting, as he said, bird-seeds of different sorts; but they noticed him particularly gathering dock-seeds, which he said were for birds, but which nobody had ever known collected for such a purpose. It was shown by some of King’s neighbours that he had whole sack-bags of such seeds in his possession during the winter. But his having collected such seeds, and his having whole bags of them, did not prove that he had sown Mr. Drury’s corn-fields with them. There was no moral doubt whatever that he had done it; but it had been done so adroitly, that no one had ever seen him about Mr. Drury’s farm at night. He must have done it in midnights when every soul was fast asleep. Mr. Drury had him up before the magistrates; and brought plenty of evidence of his having collected dock-seed for six or seven miles round, and of his having sacks full of it; but when the magistrates called on him to show how he had disposed of it, Ned grinned, and said, “How was he to know? He was always selling seeds and yarbs (herbs) to all sorts of people, and he did not know their names.” The old proverb of any fool taking a horse to water, and not all England being able to make him drink, was verified in Ned’s case. Nobody could convict him, and he was too shrewd to convict himself. The magistrates were compelled to dismiss him with a threat, and everybody said Mr. Drury had better have let Ned alone, he would do him some other ill-turn. And this soon appeared to be the case, for Mr. Drury’s field-gates were continually found wide open in a morning, and cattle and sheep let in or let out, and the greatest damage done. Sheep and cattle were found eating up and treading down the corn crops, and his horses were gone off, and were discovered in some neighbouring parish. In this case the able and acute Mr. Trant Drury had found his match in the half-witted Ned King, the fool of Castleborough, much to the delectation of farmers and labourers all round Woodburn. CHAPTER X. WOODBURN AND ROCKVILLE AT WAR.