His host begged him to be seated again. ‘There’s no offence, neighbour. No offence in the world, I’m sure. Twas for stealing a horse they hanged yon fellow from Glatting today. Farmer Broome here was telling us but now how he fared on the gallows.’
Broome eagerly took up the tale. ‘Ay, a villainous fellow a was. A countable ugly face on him, a had.’
‘Ah!’ said the company, greatly relishing the story. ‘Countable ugly, was he?’ said one. ‘A savage customer, I bluv,’ said another. The rest, impatient for a repetition of details they had already heard, said nothing, but stared expectantly at the enterprising Broome, who had travelled many miles and missed a day’s work to see this execution and was now come home with a rich treasure of memory.
With a selfconscious swagger Broome called to the potman for another pint. All eyes, except Coachy’s, were upon him. ‘He’ll steal no more harses, sartain sure.’ He laughed cockily, as though to himself belonged the credit of this achievement. And his neighbours, seeming to concede this point of view, took up the laugh with admiration.
‘So they hanged the villain, did ’em?’ said Roger Peakod invitingly.
‘You’re right, Roger,’ said Broome, with a lordly smile. ‘Hang un they did, I bluv. And with these two eyes I seen ’em.’
‘Sarve un fair for a thief,’ grumbled Mykelborne, with, nevertheless, a troubled look in his eyes.
‘Hangen, mark my words,’ said Shellett the cowherd, ‘be too good for some of they poxy knaves. Arnest folk same as us baint safe in our beds o’ night with they abroad.’ His placid eyes grew bright with fear.
‘Yet tis a shameful thing, all said,’ ventured Mr Bailey, ‘to send a man to his Maker with a noose round his neck.’
‘And how did a look?’ asked Peakod urgently. ‘Did a goo black i’ the face, farmer?’
‘A did so,’ said Broome. ‘But that worn’t the best on it. Now twas this way, neighbours . . .’
‘And another thing I’ve larned from harses,’ resumed Coachy Timms, in his clear, penetrating, high-pitched voice, ‘is to mind me manners and talk to ’em as man to man. All sarts and kinds and colours I’ve had dealens with . . .’
‘Chained up like a mad dog, you might say,’ said Broome. ‘And when they dragged un outa gaol, twoulda done you good, neighbours, to hear the brave clamour he do make . . .’
‘. . . blacks and whites and roans and chestnuts,’ went on Coachy relentlessly, ‘young and old and good and bad and ornary middlin sinners like you and me. I’ve seen ’em gotten, I’ve seen ’em born, I’ve broke ’em in, I’ve ridden and druv ’em. I’ve handled more harses than I’ve seen stars in the sky. But I’m willen to learn the head and tail of the business from any son of Smulkin as’ll be painful to teach me.’
‘Such a clamour as you never did, neighbours,’ said Broome. ‘Then up a goo on the cart, and away goo the cart to where gallows was waiting all spruce and ready. And here’s a fine new cravat for thee, says Jack Ketch, putten the noose on him. Then Parson brung out his book and we gives over shouten and doffs our hats like Christian men, and Master Thief do stand there all trussed up like a fowl and staren and listenen . . .’
‘A good drop of ale!’ cried Coachy, emerging from his glass. ‘And what’s more,’ he added, taking up the thread of his discourse, ‘harses is cunnen cattle. A deal more human than some folks on two legs, and a deal better worth looken at. If there be a prettier sight than a smart young foal balancing hisself on his long spindlies and nuzzlen his dam, tis not in this alehouse I do see ut. When I was a younger man . . .’ He paused to take another draught of ale.
‘Bind up the wretch’s eyes, cries Parson, dropping his book of a sudden. He be putten a curse on me, God shield us!’ Broome’s voice had become so strident as to command attention even from Coachy for a moment. There fell a sudden silence, in which his startled audience seemed to be hearing, in the quiet of the mind, more than Broome had told them, more indeed than he had witnessed. This silence puzzled and discomforted him: he was all for merriment. But the prime of the joke was yet to come. ‘And so, neighbours, when Parson do say that, we all stare at the prisoner, us and Jack Ketch and all. And the prisoner, he stares over our heads, you might say, at the sky, and looked as though he didn’t know we was there, not a mother’s son of us. But butter my wig if a wasn’t snivvellen on the sly. Tears in his eyes as big as gobs.’ The narrator burst into a loud guffaw; and Peakod, his most appreciative listener, responded with his customary giggle.