"That's your own business, Crang. See him you did. Horse or no horse, you saw the man; and you knew him, and you were astonished. Who was he, if you please, Master Joseph Crang?"
"I can't tell 'e, sir, if I was to drop down dead this minute. And if I said ort to make 'e vancy that I knowed the gentleman, I must a' been mazed as a drummeldrone."
"Oh, a gentleman, was it? A queer place for a gentleman! No wonder you cockle yourself to keep it dark. A five-pound note to be made out of that, Joe; if the officers of justice was agreeable."
"Master Hornder, you'm a rich man, and I be but a poor one. I wouldn't like to say that you behaved below yourself, by means of what I thought; without knowing more than vancy."
"Joe, you are right, and I was wrong;" the farmer was a just man, whenever he caught sight of it; "I was going to terrify of 'e, according to the orders of the evil-thinkers, that can't believe good, because it bain't inside theirselves. But I put it to you now, Joe, as a bit of dooty; and it must tell up for you, in t'other way as well. For the sake of all good Christians, and the peace of this here parish, you be held to bail by your own conscience, the Lord having placed you in that position, to tell us the full names of this man, gentleman or ploughboy, gipsy or home-liver."
The blacksmith was watching Mr. Horner's eyes, and saw not a shadow of relenting. Then he turned to the old man, for appeal. But the Clerk, with the wisdom of fourscore years, said,--"Truth goes the furthest. Who would go to jail for you, Joe?"
"Mind that you wouldn't give me no peace; and that I says it against my will, under fear of the King and religion"--Master Crang protested, with a twist, as if a clod-crusher went over him--"likewise that I look to you to bear me harmless, as a man who speaketh doubtful of the sight of his own eyes. But unless they was wrong, and misguided by the Devil, who were abroad last night and no mistake, t'other man--in the flesh, or out of it, and a' might very well a' been out of it upon such occasion, and with that there thing behind him, and they say that the Devil doth get into a bush, as my own grandmother zee'd he once--'twixt a Rosemary tree, which goes far to prove it, being the very last a' would have chosen----"