Kitabı oku: «Johnny Ludlow, Second Series», sayfa 22
Tod’s whistle below was heard just then; and Dan, not caring to show his nose to the enemy, responded, and galloped back. We went on. The paths there are narrow, you know, and we expected to have all the string of Frogs sweeping past us, their coats brushing our jackets. But—perhaps not caring to meet us any more than we cared to meet them—most of them broke off on a detour down the steep of the hill, and so avoided us. About half-a-dozen came on. One of them was a big-shouldered, awkward, red-faced boy, taller than the rest of them and not unlike a real frog; he walked with his cap in his hand, and his brown hair stood on end like a porcupine’s. Indisputably ugly was he, with a mouth as wide as a frying-pan; but it was a pleasant and honest face, for all that. King suddenly darted to him as he was passing, and pulled him towards Captain Sanker, in excitement.
“Papa, this is the one I told you of; the one who saved me and didn’t mind the blows he got in doing it. I should have been knocked down, and my knee trampled on, but for him.”
Out went Captain Sanker’s hand to shake the boy’s. He did it heartily. As to the Frog, he blushed redder than before with modesty.
“You are a brave lad, and I thank you heartily,” said the captain, wringing his hand as though he’d wring it off. “You do honour to yourself, whoever you may be. There was not one of his own companions to think of him, and save him, and you did it in the midst of danger. Thank you, my lad.”
The captain slid half-a-crown into his hand, telling him to get some Malvern cakes. The boy stood back for us to go by. I was the last, and he spoke as if he knew me.
“Good-day, Master Johnny.”
Why, who was he? And, now I came to look at his freckled face, it seemed quite familiar. His great wide mouth brought me remembrance.
“Why, it’s Mark Ferrar! I didn’t know you at first, Mark.”
“We’ve come over here for the day in two vans,” said Mark, putting his grey cap on. “Eighty of the biggest of us; the rest are to come to-morrow. Some gent that’s visiting at St. Peter’s parsonage has given us the treat, sir.”
“All right, Mark. I’m glad you thought of King Sanker on Saturday.”
Ferrar touched his cap, and went vaulting down after his comrades. He was related to Daniel Ferrar, the Squire’s bailiff, of whom you have heard before, poor fellow, and also to the Batleys of South Crabb. He used to come over to Crabb, that’s where I had seen him.
Some donkeys came running down the hill, their white cloths flying. Captain Sanker stopped one and put King on him—for King was tired already. We soon got to the top then, and to Lady Harcourt’s Tower. Oh, it was a glorious day! The great wide prospect around stood out in all its beauty. The vale of Herefordshire on the one side with its rural plains and woods basked in the sunshine, its crops of ruddy pears and apples giving token of the perry and cider to come; on the other side rose the more diversified landscape that has been so much told and talked of. Over the green meadows and the ripening corn-fields lay Worcester itself: the cathedral showing out well, and the summit of the high church-spire of St. Andrew’s catching a glint of the sunlight. Hills caught the eye wherever it turned: Bredon Hill, Abberleigh Hills, the Old Hills; homesteads lay upon their lands, half hidden by their rick-yards and clustering trees; cattle and sheep browsed on the grass or lay in the shade to shelter themselves from the midday sun. To the right, on the verge of the horizon, far, far away, might be caught a glimpse of something that sparkled like a bed of stars—the Bristol Channel. It is not often you can discern that from Malvern, but this day that I am telling of was one of the clearest ever seen there; the atmosphere looking quite rarefied in spite of the sunlight.
King’s donkey regaled himself with morsels of herbage, the donkey-boy lay stretched beside him, and we boys raced about. When an hour or two had passed, and we were as hot as fire and more hungry than hunters, we bethought ourselves of dinner. King got on his donkey again, and the rest of us whipped him up. When half-way down we saw Dr. Teal gesticulating and shouting, telling us to come on and not keep dinner waiting longer.
We had it in the room behind the well. It was a squeeze to sit round the table. Cold meats, and salad, and pastry, and all sorts of good things. Dan was next to me; he said he could hardly eat for thirst, and kept drinking away at the bottled ale.
“My dear,” said Mrs. Todhetley to him by-and-by, “don’t you think you had better drink some water instead—or lemonade? This bottled ale is very strong.”
“I am afraid it is,” said Dan. “I’ll go in for the tarts now.”
The room was stuffy; and after dinner a table was carried out to a sheltered place near the well: not much better than a little ledge of a path, but where we could not be overlooked, and should be quite out of the way of the hill-climbers. The bank rose perpendicularly above us, banks descended beneath to goodness knew where; there we sat at dessert, all sheltered. I think dark trees and shrubs overshaded us; but I am not altogether sure.
How it came about, I hardly know: but something was brought up about King’s store of ballads, and he was asked to give us his favourite one, “Lord Bateman,” for the benefit of the company. He turned very shy, but Captain Sanker told him not to be silly: and after going white and red for a bit, he began. Perhaps the reader would like to hear it. I never repeat it to myself, no, nor even a verse of it, but poor King Sanker comes before me just as I saw him that day, his back to the ravine below, his eyes looking at nothing, his thin hands nervously twisting some paper about that had covered the basket of raspberries.
Lord Bateman was a noble lord,
A noble lord of high degree:
He shipped himself on board a ship;
Some foreign country he would see.
He sailed east, he sailèd west,
Until he came unto Turkey,
Where he was taken, and put in prison
Until his life was quite weary.
In this prison there grew a tree:
It grew so very stout and strong:
And he was chained by the middle
Until his life was almost gone.
The Turk, he had one only daughter,
The fairest creature eye e’er did see:
She stole the keys of her father’s prison,
And said she’d set Lord Bateman free.
“Have you got houses?—have you got lands
Or does Northumberland belong to thee?
And what would you give to the fair young I
Who out of prison would set you free?”
“Oh, I’ve got houses, and I’ve got lands,
And half Northumberland belongs to me;
And I’d give it all to the fair young lady
That out of prison would set me free.”
Then she took him to her father’s palace,
And gave to him the best of wine;
And every health that she drank to him
Was “I wish, Lord Bateman, you were mine.
“For seven long years I’ll make a vow;
And seven long years I’ll keep it strong:
If you will wed no other woman,
I will wed no other man.”
Then she took him to her father’s harbour,
And gave to him a ship of fame;
“Farewell, farewell to you, Lord Bateman;
I fear I never shall see you again.”
When seven long years were gone and past,
And fourteen days, well known to me;
She packed up her gay gold and clothing,
And said Lord Bateman she would see.
When she came to Lord Bateman’s castle,
So boldly there she rang the bell:
“Who’s there, who’s there?” cried the young proud porter:
“Who’s there, who’s there, unto me tell?”
“Oh, is this Lord’s Bateman’s castle?
And is his lordship here within?”
“Oh yes, oh yes,” cried the young proud porter:
“He has just now taken his young bride in.”
“Tell him to send me a slice of cake,
And a bottle of the best of wine;
And not to forget the fair young lady
That did release him when close confined.”
Away, away went this young proud porter,
Away, away, away went he;
Until he came unto Lord Bateman,
When on his bended knees fell he.
“What news, what news, my young porter;
What news, what news have you brought unto me?”
“Oh, there is the fairest of all young ladies
That ever my two eyes did see.
“She has got rings on every finger,
And on one of them she has got three;
And she has as much gold round her middle
As would buy Northumberland of thee.
“She tells you to send her a slice of cake,
And a bottle of the best of wine;
And not to forget the fair young lady
That did release you when close confined.”
Lord Bateman in a passion flew;
He broke his sword in splinters three;
“I’ll give all my father’s wealth and riches
Now, if Sophia has crossed the sea.”
Then up spoke his young bride’s mother—
Who never was heard to speak so free:
“Don’t you forget my only daughter,
Although Sophia has crossed the sea.”
“I own I’ve made a bride of your daughter
She’s none the better nor worse for me;
She came to me on a horse and saddle,
And she may go back in a carriage and three.”
Then another marriage was prepared,
With both their hearts so full of glee:
“I’ll range no more to foreign countries,
Since my Sophia has crossed the sea.”
King stopped, just as shyly as he had begun. Some laughed, others applauded him; and the Squire told us that the first time he had ever heard “Lord Bateman” was in Sconton’s show, on Worcester racecourse, many a year ago.
After that, we broke up. I and some of the boys climbed up straight to Lady Harcourt’s Tower again. A few Frogs were about the hills, but they did not come in contact with us. When we got back to St. Ann’s the tea was ready in the room.
“And I wish to goodness they’d have it,” cried Dan, “for I’m as thirsty as a fish. I’ve been asleep out there all the while on the bench in the sun. Can’t we have tea, mother?”
“As soon as ever the gentlemen come back,” spoke up Mrs. Teal, who seemed to like order. “They went down to look at the Abbey.”
They were coming up then, puffing over the walk; Tod and Fred Sanker with them. We sat down to tea; and it was half over when the two young Sankers, King and Toby, were missed.
“Tiresome monkeys!” cried the captain. “I never came over here with a party yet, but we had to spend the last hour or two hunting some of them up. Well, I’ll not bother myself over it: they shall find their way home as they can.”
Toby ran in presently. He had only been about the hills, he said, and had not seen King.
“I dare say King’s still in the place where we had dessert,” said Hetta Sanker, just then thinking of it. “He stayed behind us all, saying he was tired. You boys can go and see.”
I and Jim Teal ran off together. King was not there. One of the women at the well said that when she went out for the chairs and things, just before tea-time, nobody was there.
“Oh, he’ll turn up presently,” said the captain. And we went on with our tea, and forgot him.
It was twilight when we got down to the village to start for home. The Squire set off first: the same party with him as in the morning, except that Mrs. Teal took her husband’s place. When they were bringing out the post-carriage, King was again thought of.
“He has stayed somewhere singing to himself,” said Mrs. Sanker.
We went off in different directions, shouting our throats hoarse. Up as far as St. Ann’s, and along the hill underneath, and in all the corners of the village: no King. It was getting strange.
“I should hope none of those impudent Frogs have made off with him!” cried Toby Sanker.
“They are capable of anything, mind you,” added Dan.
One vanload of Frogs had started; the other was getting ready to start. The boys, gaping and listening about, saw and heard all our consternation at the dilemma we were in. Mrs. Todhetley, who did not understand the state of social politics, as between them and the college school, turned and inquired whether they had seen King.
“A delicate lad, who walks lame,” she explained. “We think he must have fallen asleep somewhere on the hill: and we cannot start without him.”
The Frogs showed themselves good-natured; and went tearing up towards the hill to look for King. In passing the Unicorn, a pleasure-party of young men and women, carrying their empty provision-baskets, came running downwards, saying that they had heard groaning under a part of the hill—and described where. I seemed to catch the right place, as if by instinct, and was up there first. King was lying there; not groaning then, but senseless or dead.
Looking upwards to note the position, we thought he must have fallen down from the place where we had sat at dessert. Hetta Sanker said she had left him there by himself, to rest.
“He must have dropped asleep, and fallen down,” cried Dr. Teal.
King came to as they lifted him, and walked a few steps; but looked around and fell aside as though his head were dazed. Dr. Teal thought that there was not much the matter, and that he might be conveyed to Worcester. Ferrar helped to carry him down the hill, and the other Frogs followed. A fine fury their van-driver was in, at their having kept him waiting!
King was made comfortable along the floor of the waggonette, upon some rugs and blankets lent by the Crown; and so was taken home. When Captain Sanker found what had happened, he grew excited, and went knocking at half the doctors’ doors in Worcester. Mr. Woodward was the first in, then Dr. Malden and Mr. Carden came running together. By what the captain had said, they expected to find all the house dead.
King seemed better in the morning. The injury lay chiefly in his head. We did not hear what the doctors made of it. He was sensible, and talked a little. When asked how he came to fall, all he said was that he “went over and could not save himself.”
Coming in, from carrying the news of how he was to the Squire and Mrs. Todhetley at the Star, I found Mark Ferrar at the door.
“Mr. Johnny,” said he, in a low voice, his plain face all concern, “how did it happen? Sure he was not pushed over?”
“Of course not. Why do you ask it?”
Ferrar paused. “Master Johnny, when boys are lame they are more cautious. He’d hardly be likely to slip.”
“He might in walking. It’s only a narrow ledge there. And his sister says she thinks he went to sleep when she left him. She was the last who saw him.”
Mark’s wide mouth went into all sorts of contortions, and the freckles shone in the sun in his effort to get the next words out.
“I fancy it was me that saw him last, Master Johnny. Leastways, later than his sister.”
“Did you? How was that?”
“He must have seen me near the place, and he called to me. There was nobody there but him, and some chairs and a table and glasses and things. He asked me to sit down, and began telling me he had been saying ‘Lord Bateman’ to them all. I didn’t know what ‘Lord Bateman’ meant, Master Johnny—and he said he would tell it me; he should not mind then, but he had minded saying it to the company. It was poetry, I found; but he stopped in the middle, and told me to go then, for he saw some of them coming–”
“Some of what?” I interrupted.
“Well, I took it to mean some of his grown-up party, or else the college boys. Anyway, he seemed to want me gone, sir, and I went off at once. I didn’t see him after that.”
“He must have fallen asleep, and somehow slipped over.”
“Yes, sir. What a pity he was left in that shallow place!”
King seemed to have all his wits about him, but his face had a white, odd look in it. He lay in a room on the first floor, that belonged in general to the two girls. When I said Mark Ferrar was outside, King asked me to take him up. But I did not like taking him without speaking to Captain Sanker; and I went to him in the parlour.
“The idea of a Frog coming into our house!” cried resentful Dan, as he heard me. “It’s like his impudence to stop outside it! What next? Let him wait till King’s well.”
“You hold your tongue, Dan,” cried the captain. “The boy shall go up, whether he’s a Frog, or whether he’s one of you. Take him up, Johnny.”
He did not look unlike a frog when he got into the room, with his wide, red, freckled face and his great wide mouth—but, as I have said, it was a face to be trusted. The first thing he did, looking at King, was to burst into a great blubber of tears.
“I hope you’ll get well,” said he.
“I might have been as bad as this in the fight, but for your pulling me out of it, Frog,” said King, in his faint voice. And he did not call him Frog in any contempt, but as though it were his name: he knew him by no other. “Was that bump done in the battle?”
Mark had his cap off: on one side of his forehead, under the hair, we saw a big lump the size of an egg. “Yes,” he answered, “it was got in the fight. Father thinks it never means to go down. It’s pretty stiff and sore yet.”
King sighed. He was gazing up at the lump with his nice blue eyes.
“I don’t think there’ll be any fighting in heaven,” said King. “And I wrote out ‘Lord Bateman’ the other day, and they shall give it you to keep. I didn’t finish telling it to you. He owned half Northumberland; and he married her after all. She had set him free from the prison, you know, Frog.”
“Yes,” replied Frog, quite bewildered, and looking as though he could not make top or tail of the story. “I hope you’ll get well, sir. How came you to fall?”
“I don’t think they expect me to get well: they wouldn’t have so many doctors if they did. I shan’t be lame, Frog, up there.”
“Did you slip?—or did anybody push you?” went on Frog, lowering his voice.
“Hush!” said King, glancing at the door. “If papa heard you say that, he might go into a passion.”
“But—was it a slip—or were you pushed over?” persisted Frog.
“My leg is always slipping: it has never been of much good to me,” answered King. “When you come up there, and see me with a beautiful strong body and straight limbs, you won’t know me again at first. Good-bye, till then, Frog; good-bye. It was very kind of you to carry me out of the fight, and God saw you.”
“Good-bye, sir,” said Frog, with another burst, as he put out his hand to meet poor King’s white one. “Perhaps you’ll get over it yet.”
Tod and I took leave of them in the afternoon, and went up to the Star. The Squire wanted to be home early. The carriage was waiting before the gateway, the ostler holding the heads of Bob and Blister, when Captain Sanker came up in dreadful excitement.
“He’s gone,” he exclaimed. “My poor King’s gone. He died as the clock was striking four.”
And we had supposed King to be going on well! The Squire ordered the horses to be put up again, and we went down to the house. The boys and girls were all crying.
King lay stretched on the bed, his face very peaceful and looking less white than I had sometimes seen it look in life. On the cheeks there lingered a faint colour; his forehead felt warm; you could hardly believe he was dead.
“He has gone to the heaven he talked of,” said Mrs. Sanker, through her tears. “He has been talking about it at intervals all day—and now he is there; and has his harp amongst the angels.”
And that was the result of our Day of Pleasure! The force of those solemn words has rarely been brought home to hearts as it was to ours then: “In the midst of life we are in death.”
XI.
THE FINAL ENDING TO IT
Of all the gloomy houses any one ever stayed in, Captain Sanker’s was the worst. Nothing but coffins coming into it, and all of us stealing about on tip-toe. King lay in the room where he died. There was to be an inquest: at which the captain was angry. But he was so excited and sorrowful just then as to have no head at all.
Which might well be excused in him. Picture what it was! Three carriages full of us had started on the Tuesday morning, expecting to have a day of charming pleasure on the Malvern Hills in the July sunshine; no more thinking of death or any other catastrophe, than if the world had never contained such! And poor King—poor lame King, whose weakness made him more helpless than were we strong ones, and who only on the previous Saturday had been plucked out of the fight in Diglis Meadow and been saved—King must fall asleep on a dangerous part of the hill and roll down it and come home to die! “Better King than any of the rest of you,” cried Mrs. Sanker, more than once, in her dreamy way, and with her eyes dry, for she seemed tired of tears; “he could never have done battle with the world as you will have to do it; and he was quite ready for heaven.”
Instead of going home with our people the day after the death, as Tod did, I had to wait at Worcester for the inquest. When the beadle (or whoever the officer might be; he had gold cord on his hat and white ribbed stockings below his breeches: which stockings might have been fellows to old Jones’s of Church Dykely) came to Captain Sanker’s to make inquiries the night of the death, and heard that I had been first up with King after his fall, he said I should have to give evidence. So I stayed on with them—much to my uneasiness.
If I had thought the Sankers queer people before, I thought them queerer now. Not one of the boys and girls, except Fred, cared to go alone by the door of the room where King lay. And, talking of King, it was not until I saw the name on the coffin-lid that I knew his name was not King, but Kingsley. He looked as nice and peaceful as any dead lad with a nice face could look; and yet they were afraid to pass by outside. Dan and Ruth were the worst. I did not wonder at her—she was a little girl; but I did at Dan. Fred told me that when they were children a servant used to tell them stories of ghosts and dreams and banshees; Hetta and he were too old to be frightened, but the rest had taken it all into their nature. I privately thought that Mrs. Sanker was no better than the fool of a servant, reciting to them her dreams and accounts of apparitions.
King died on the Wednesday afternoon. On Thursday afternoon the inquest took place. It was held at the Angel Inn, in Sidbury, and Mr. Robert Allies was the foreman. Boys don’t give evidence on inquests every day: I felt shy and uncomfortable at having to do it; and perhaps that may be the reason why the particulars remain so strongly on my memory. The time fixed was three o’clock, but it was nearly four when they came down to look at King: the coroner explained to the jury that he had been detained. When they went back to the Angel Inn we followed them—Captain Sanker, Fred, and I.
All sorts of nonsense ran about the town. It was reported that there had been a fight with the Frogs on Malvern Hill, during which King had been pitched over. This was only laughed at by those who knew how foundationless it was. Not a shadow of cause existed for supposing it to have been anything but a pure accident.
The coroner and jury sat at a long table covered with green baize. The coroner had his clerk by him; and on one side Mr. Allies sat Captain Chamberlain, on the other side Mr. Allcroft. Dr. Teal and Mr. Woodward were present, and gave the medical evidence in a most learned manner. Reduced to plainness, it meant that King had died of an injury to the head.
When my turn came, what they chiefly asked me was, whether I had seen or heard any quarrelling with St. Peter’s boys that day at Malvern. None whatever, I answered. Was I quite sure of that? pursued one—it was Mr. Allcroft. I did not think there had been, or could have been, I repeated: we and the charity boys had kept apart from each other all day. Then another of the jury, Mr. Stone, put some questions, and then Mr. Allen—I thought they were never going to believe me. So I said it was the opposite of quarrelling, and told of Captain Sanker’s giving one of them half-a-crown because he had been kind to King on Saturday, and of some of the boys—all who had not gone home in the first van—having helped us to look for King at night. After they had turned me inside out, the coroner could say that these questions were merely put for form’s sake and for the satisfaction of the public.
When the witnesses were done with, the coroner spoke to the jury. I suppose it was his charge. It seemed all as plain as a turnpike, he said: the poor little lame boy had slipped and fallen. The probability was that he had dropped asleep too near the edge of the perpendicular bank, and had either fallen over in his sleep, or in the act of awaking. He (the coroner) thought it must have been the former, as no cry appeared to have been made, or heard. Under these circumstances, he believed the jury could have no difficulty in arriving at their verdict.
The last word, “verdict,” was still on his tongue, when some commotion took place at the end of the room. A working-man, in his shirt-sleeves and a leather apron on, was pushing in through the crowd at the door, making straight for the table and the coroner. Some of the jury knew him for John Dance, a glove-cutter at a Quaker gentleman’s manufactory hard by. He begged pardon of the gentlefolk for coming amid ’em abrupt like that, he said, just as he was, but something had but now come to his hearing about the poor little boy who had died. It made him fear he had not fell of himself, but been flung over, and he had thought it his duty to come and tell it.
The consternation this suggestion created, delivered in its homely words, would not be easy to describe. Captain Sanker, who had been sitting against the wall, got up in agitation. John Dance was asked his grounds for what he said, and was entering into a long rigmarole of a tale when the coroner stopped him, and bade him simply say how it had come to his own knowledge. He answered that upon going home just now to tea, from his work, his son Harry, who was in St. Peter’s School, told him of it, having been sent to do so by the master, Clerk Jones. His son was with him, waiting to be questioned.
The boy came forward, very red and sheepish, looking as though he thought he was going to be hung. He stammered and stuttered in giving his answers to the coroner.
The tale he told was this. His name was Henry Dance, aged thirteen. He was on the hill, not very far from St. Ann’s Well, on the Tuesday afternoon, looking about for Mark Ferrar. All on a sudden he heard some quarrelling below him: somebody seemed to be in a foaming passion, and little King the lame boy called out in a fright, “Oh, don’t! don’t! you’ll throw me over!” Heard then a sort of rustle of shrubs—as it sounded to him—and then heard the steps of some one running away along the path below the upright bank. Couldn’t see anything of this; the bank prevented him; but did see the arm of the boy who was running as he turned round the corner. Didn’t see the boy; only saw his left arm swaying; he had a green handkerchief in his hand. Could not tell whether it was one of their boys (St. Peter’s) or one of the college boys; didn’t see enough of him for that. Didn’t know then that anything bad had happened, and thought no more about it at all; didn’t hear of it till the next morning: he had been in the first van that left Malvern, and went to bed as soon as he got home.
The account was listened to breathlessly. The boy was in a regular fright while he told it, but his tones and looks seemed honest and true.
“How did you know it was King Sanker’s voice you heard?” asked the coroner.
“Please, sir, I didn’t know it,” was the answer. “When I came to hear of his fall the next day, I supposed it must ha’ been his. I didn’t know anybody had fell down; I didn’t hear any cry.”
“What time in the afternoon was this?”
“Please, sir, I don’t know exact. We had our tea at four: it wasn’t over-long after that.”
“Did you recognize the other voice?”
“No, sir. It was a boy’s voice.”
“Was it one you had ever heard before?”
“I couldn’t tell, sir; I wasn’t near enough to hear or to catch the words. King Sanker spoke last, just as I got over the spot.”
“You heard of the accident the next morning, you say. Did you hear of it early?”
“It was afore breakfast, sir. Some of our boys that waited for the last van telled me; and Ferrar, he telled me. They said they had helped to look for him.”
“And then it came into your mind, that it was King Sanker you had heard speak?”
“Yes, sir, it did. It come right into my mind, all sudden like, that he might have been throwed over.”
“Well now, Mr. Harry Dance, how was it that you did not at once hasten to report this? How is it that you have kept it in till now?”
Harry Dance looked too confused and frightened to answer. He picked at the band of his grey cap and stood, first on one foot, then on the other. The coroner pressed the question sharply, and he replied in confusion.
Didn’t like to tell it. Knew people were saying it might have been one of their boys that had pitched him over. Was afraid to tell. Did say a word to Mark Ferrar; not much: Ferrar wanted to know more, and what it was he meant, but didn’t tell him. That was yesterday morning. Had felt uncomfortable ever since then, wanting to tell, but not liking to. This afternoon, in school, writing their copies at the desk, he had told Tom Wood’art, the carpenter’s son, who sat next him; leastways, had said the college boy had not fell of himself, but been pitched over; and Tom Wood’art had made him tell it to another boy, Collins; and then the two had went up to the desk and telled their master, Mr. Jones; and Mr. Jones, after calling him up to ask about it, had ordered him home to tell it all to his father; and his father said he must come and tell it here.
The father, John Dance, spoke up again to confirm this, so far as his part went. He was so anxious it should be told to the gentlemen at once, he repeated, that he had come out all untidy as he was, not stopping to put himself to rights in any way.
The next person to step forward was Mr. Jones, in his white cravat and black clothes. He stated that the two boys, Thomas Woodward and James Collins, had made this strange communication to him. Upon which he had questioned Dance, and at once despatched him home to acquaint his father.
“What sort of a boy is Harry Dance, Mr. Jones?” inquired the coroner. “A truthful boy?—one to be depended on? Some boys, as I dare say you know, are capable of romancing in the most unaccountable manner: inventing lies by the bushel.”
“The boy is truthful, sir; a sufficiently good boy,” was the reply. “Some of them are just what you describe; but Dance, so far as I believe, may be relied upon.”
