“Oh, what awful lies!” cried the wife. “It’s a wonder you don’t fall dead!”
“You were not there,” the Clerk remarked quietly. “Now, Oby, what is your defence? Have you got any witnesses?”
“No; I ain’t got no witnesses. All as I did, I know I walked up the hedge to look for mushrooms. I saw one of them things”—meaning the wires on the table—“and I just stooped down to see what it was, ’cos I didn’t know. I never seed one afore; and I was just going to pick it up and look at it” (the magistrates glance at each other, and cannot suppress a smile at this profound innocence), “when this fellow jumped out and frightened me. I never seed no rabbit.”
“Why, you put the rabbit in your pocket,” interrupts the first witness.
“Never mind,” said the Clerk to the witness; “let him go on.”
“That’s all as I got to say,” continues the defendant. “I never seed no such things afore; and if he hadn’t come I should have put it down again.”
“But you were trespassing,” said the Clerk.
“I didn’t know it. There wasn’t no notice-board.”
“Now, Oby,” cried the head keeper, “you know you’ve been along that lane this ten years.”
“That will do” (from the chairman); “is there any more evidence?”
As none was forthcoming, the Bench turned a little aside and spoke in low tones. The defendant’s wife immediately set up a sobbing, varied occasionally by a shriek; the infant woke up and cried, and two or three women of the same party behind began to talk in excited tones about “Shame.” The sentence was 2_l_. and costs—an announcement that caused a perfect storm of howling and crying.
The defendant put his hands in his pockets with the complacent expression of a martyr. “I must go to gaol a’ spose; none of ourn ever went thur afore: a’ spose _I_ must go.” “Come,” said the Clerk, “why, you or your brother bought a piece of land and a cottage not long ago,”—then to the Bench, “They’re not real gipsies: he is a grandson of old Bottleton who had the tollgate; you recollect, Sir.”
But the defendant declares he has no money; his friends shake their heads gloomily; and amid the shrieking of his wife and the crying of the child he is removed in the custody of two constables, to be presently conveyed to gaol. With ferocious glances at the Bench, as if they would like to tear the chairman’s eyes out, the women leave the court.