Part 3

"Why, you see, Dick," continued the farmer, whose common sense was of a more solid character than Dick's, though his perceptions were not quite so acute at the outset of an enquiry—"you see, Dick, this law is contrived, like most other laws, to draw a number of folk into the love and the liking of it: it isn't simply _one_ man _now_, whatever it might have been formerly, that is interested in keeping up these Game Laws. Rich folks generally think they ought to do no other but uphold 'em. They say, that all the game would soon be destroyed if every body was allowed to kill hares and pheasants when and where they like. The 'squire, too, sends presents, you know, to his acquaintances the great folk in London, and elsewhere; and if hares and pheasants and partridges were as common with poor folk as with rich, why, the great folk would soon scorn to have 'em on their tables. 'There are wheels within wheels,' as the miller says, Dick. Rich folk are sure to hang together on their side of the wheat-sack; and that is the reason—more than their money, Dick, mind ye! more than their money—why they are so much more powerful than the poor. And for the self-same reason that they _are_ so powerful, Dick," concluded the farmer, seeming determined to finish his speech in spite of the poacher's evident dislike to it, "I think it is far better for all who love peace and quietness, and a whole skin, to keep out of harm's way. You understand me, Dick! Come, dame, fill us a good jug of ale, and let us have a bit of bread and cheese, or a mouthful of bacon, and Dick and I will talk these things over a bit, just in a quiet and sensible way."

The dame hasted to set her hospitality before her spouse and the poacher; and it soon became hard to say which most excelled in the act of doing justice to it. The strong ale, however, was most freely partaken by the poacher, and, under its potency, Dick's tongue soon began to indulge itself with a tolerably large licence.

"I' faith, farmer," he said, "you gave me a roughish reception when I crossed your threshold; you must do things gentlier another time, when you're disposed for a cramp: it's only a fool-hardy sort of a thing to take a bull by the horns: it's ten times wiser, when he makes a butt at you, to scratch him a bit, and coax him, and smooth him down."

The farmer was a little nettled by Raven Dick's taunting tone and the devilry of his eye; but he thought one scuffle enough for a day, and so replied with a somewhat forced look of good humour, "I hardly think it's wisest at all times, Dick. I think, for my own part, the only way sometimes is to take a bull by the horns. And besides, Dick, whoever heard o' such a thing as scratching a bull? You may scratch an angry cur, you know, Dick," he concluded with a laugh, "but a bull!—no, no, Dick, scratching a bull won't do at all!"

"I know what I say, Farmer Dobson," cried Dick aloud, thumping one hand upon the table, and pouring the ale on the outside of the horn, instead of into it, with the other, "I know what I say,—and I say _scratching_!"

"Speak in the house, Dick!" retorted the farmer, colouring, "thou wilt not talk better sense for shouting. I tell thee that that bull's only a fool of a bull that will stand scratching! Wilt thou make me believe, think'st thou, that any body would be such a goose, for instance, as to try to scratch my old white bull in the second home close? Thou won't venture to scratch him, I'm pretty sartain, Dick, with all thy brag and bluster to boot!"

"Won't I?" cried Dick, fiercely; "why, what do ye fancy is to hinder me, eh! old clod-pate?"

"Dick, Dick!" said the farmer, cooling himself with the remembrance that the poacher was a much younger and inexperienced man than himself, and tapping the wild youth admonishingly on the shoulder, "it is far wiser for a man to go steadily about getting his bread, than either to scratch bulls, or to snickle hares, depend on't. I don't say but that you have as much right to practise one as t'other, if you feel inclined; only, you are almost sure to repent it in the end, in either case: you understand me, Dick?"

"'Od dang it!" hiccupped Dick, setting his ragged hat on one side, and looking at the farmer as if he intended him to understand he was no ordinary hero, "do ye think, Kiah Dobson, that I fear aught that may happen? I say I _will scratch_ your bull; ay, and I'll tame him, too, as I've tamed you?"

"Better not," replied the farmer drily; "better go quietly home, Dick, and try to earn thy living honestly, like thy father and thy brother Ned."

"To Jericho with 'em both!" roared Raven Dick, bouncing up from his seat: "they're fools both of 'em! I don't intend to slave for ever, and never have any fun, like them. No, no! I'll have a hare when I like; ay, and I'll scratch a bull when I like, too!—so here goes!" and out sallied the intoxicated poacher, snatching up the dead hares as he went, and placing them under his arm as before. Farmer Dobson and the dame followed, for their curiosity was, naturally, too highly excited to permit their remaining behind.

Just as Dick vaulted over the first hedge, for he was in too heroic a vein to think of taking the stile, though it was close by, Dick met one who was no stranger to him. It was the squire's gamekeeper. The moon shone brightly, and the gamekeeper looked hard at Dick, and still harder at the hares under his arm. But although the gamekeeper had his gun with him as usual, he most likely felt unwilling to encounter one so strong, and withal so reckless as he knew Raven Dick to be, for he did not speak to him. Dick spoke to the gamekeeper, notwithstanding.

"Heigho!" said he, "brother poacher! how are you for fun? just stop and look at me, while I scratch Kiah Dobson's old bull, will ye?" and off he went along the hedge-row in quest of his new game, while the gamekeeper and the farmer and his wife stood gazing after him in astonishment.

Scarcely sooner said than done! Dick came up to the bull as he lay in the pasture, quietly and unsuspectingly chewing the cud, and Dick began to scratch the bull. It need hardly be said that if Dick thought this very funny, the horned beast's thoughts were of another complexion. The bull rose, blurred, and ran bang upon Dick, goring his ribs, throwing him up, and, bounding to the other side of the field, left the scratcher senseless upon the grass, and all before you could have found breath to say, "Jack Robinson!" had you been looking on, like the gamekeeper and farmer and dame Dobson.

Nothing in the wide world could have given the gamekeeper greater pleasure than Dick's overthrow. "Farmer Dobson," said he, "now is the time to nab the rascal: fetch your wheelbarrow, and we'll put him into it, and take him away to the next constable's, and he shall put him into the close-hole, till justice can be had upon him: it will do the Squire's heart good, I'm sure, to learn that we have noosed the Raven at last, after he has noosed so many score brace o' game."

Kiah Dobson's heart felt reluctant to assist in imprisoning Dick, 'scapegrace, although he knew him to be: but how could he refuse compliance with the request of the squire's gamekeeper, for there lay the hares by the poacher's side? Besides, as Kiah often used to say, when he related the story in after years, he reflected that although Dick was so good a logician on the evils of the Game Laws, yet he had become so outrageously daring in bidding defiance to danger, that he feared ill would come on it, if a timely check were not given to his course. So Kiah went and fetched the barrow, and he and the gamekeeper lifted Dick into it, and away they wheeled him to the next constable's house. A surgeon attended to Dick's wounds, when he had brought him to his senses a little; and, the next week, the squire himself, sitting in judicial state at the hall of Manby, committed Dick to the House of Correction for six months.

Dick found the labour of knocking hemp—the usual employ of prisoners in the gaols of North Lincolnshire at that period—to be but pitiful "fun." And when he reflected that he would be likely to come there again, or to some worse place, if he ever afterwards ventured to renew his practice of "snickling" hares, he steadily resolved to "work like his father and his brother Ned," as Farmer Dobson advised. Dick's views on the Game Laws never altered; but he felt, after this sorrowful experience, it would be worse than folly to dream of violating them with impunity, in a country where "the rich all hung together on their own side of the wheat sack," as Kiah Dobson had observed. Now and then, when he happened to have shaken hands too freely with his old acquaintance Sir John Barleycorn, even years after his imprisonment, Raven Dick would be liable to relapse into some shade of his old feeling, and putting on a "gallows-look," as the landlord of the Harrows and Plough, in Froddingham, used to call it, he would threaten to return to his old trade. But there was one saying which, when "passed about" on the long settle of the public-house, was always sure to raise a hearty chorus of laughter at Dick's expense, and to have the effect of dispelling, in a twinkling, all Dick's dreams of having more "fun:" it was—"Who scratched the Bull?"

TIM SWALLOW-WHISTLE, THE TAILOR; OR, "EVERY DOG HAS HIS DAY."

Tim Swallow-whistle, the tailor, lived at Horncastle, a thriving little agricultural town in the centre of Lincolnshire, and now well-known even to the verge of Europe for its prodigious yearly horse fair, to which Russ and Pruss, Netherlander and Austrian, Frenchman, Swiss, and Italian, with even, at times, the turban'd Turk, may be beheld flocking to purchase from the rare show of steeds: "but let that pass!" Tim was not one of your fashionable tailors, it is true, but he was reckoned an "uncommon neat hand" at his trade. Indeed, old Cocky Davy, who was a very emperor among the Lincolnshire tailors, always declared Tim to be the cleverest apprentice that ever received his indentures at his hands. Old Cocky—he was so termed on account of the particular loftiness of his carriage—Old Cocky had one especial maxim; it was, "Strike your needle dead, you dog; and make your thread cry 'twang!'"—and no one apprentice that ever sat upon Davy's shop-board so fully gratified his master by the gallant and complete style in which he fulfilled this maxim, as did Tim Swallow-whistle. Cocky Davy was often heard to say—ay, and to swear it too, when in his cups—that it did his heart good to see the masterly manner in which Tim used to strike the cloth. And then, for finishing a button-hole, "Good heavens!"—Cocky Davy would declare in the White Swan parlour, when the clock was on the stroke of twelve—"why, Tim could turn the thing off his fingers with every cast of the thread as regular and exact as if he had worked it by geometry;" and then Cocky would thump his pewter tankard with vehement force upon mine host's white wooden table, and call to have it refilled for the last time that night.

It may easily be guessed that Tim Swallow-whistle was not only a clever hand, but a hard-working lad, while an apprentice, or otherwise he would not have worn such excelling commendations from a master who was quite as frequently found in the parlour of the White Swan as in his own shop, and therefore found it of incalculable value to himself to possess an apprentice who would work hard while his master played. Now, as a loitering apprentice usually makes a worthless, idle man, so a diligent lad is almost invariably found to carry his early habits of industry into mature life, and to make a stirring and prosperous citizen, unless some untoward circumstances arise to bereave him of the power for exertion, or to deprive him of its legitimate and well-deserved fruits.

Tim Swallow-whistle did not belie the promise of his youth. He was full forty years old when the incidents occurred we are about to relate; and up to that time, as he used himself to say, "Nobody could ever say he had an idle bone in his skin." But, let a man be as industrious and well-disposed as he may, ten to one but somebody or other in this crooked world will be found determined to find fault with him. So it was with Tim: he "minded his own business" most emphatically; for he was regularly found on his shop-board every morning, winter or summer, as the clock struck five; and he seldom quitted it before seven at night, unless on some special holiday occasion: he "paid every one their own"—that is to say, he kept no scores, either at the baker's, the butcher's, the grocer's, or at the alehouse: he had a whole coat on his back—though there was, here and there, a patch in it of his own neatest style of repair: and, to conclude the catalogue of his competency in his own language, "he had always something to eat when other folk went to dinner."

Tim contrived to keep up to this standard of comparative comfort, too, in spite of a breeding wife, who had stocked his cottage with nine "small children," though he was not married till he was thirty. With so many excellences, who could have thought that any one would be bad enough to attempt to mar Tim's well-earned happiness? But the world is, what we have just termed it, a crooked world; and so poor Tim was doomed to meet with undeserved annoyance.

Just opposite Tim's little shop lived a great professor of sour-godliness. Unluckily, he was not only of the same homely trade with Tim, but was enabled to hold up his head more loftily among his fellow-tradesmen, by reason that a maiden aunt happened to die and leave him a neat little freehold that brought him in 50_l._ a-year, in addition to his earnings by the shears, needle, and thimble. Jedediah Prim—for so was this fortunate tailor called—was adjudged by his neighbours to be ill-disposed towards his poorer brother snip, solely because Tim had always sufficient employ for himself and an apprentice, whereas Prim's manners were so uninviting, and his character so mean, that he barely ensured occupation for his own solitary needle.

Since Prim, at heart, was a worshipper of Mammon above all other gods, it was not at all wonderful that he felt envious at his neighbour's trade. Nevertheless, Prim ever affected the greatest scorn of these neighbourly charges of avarice and envy, and most piously averred that he had no other distaste to "the man over the way," as he called Tim, than that which was created in his soul by "the ungodly man's profaneness!" "He is every day selling his soul to Satan by the whistling of the Evil One's own tunes!" was Prim's godly lamentation over the evil ways of his neighbour. This was a severe hit at the only kind of recreation in which poor Tim indulged. He had been a hard whistler, as well as a hard worker, from a lad; and from the peculiarity of his way of whistling, which very much resembled an endless twitter, Tim caught the curious _soubriquet_ of "Swallow-whistle" among his fellow-apprentices at Cocky Davy's, and kept it to his dying day.

Now, whistling or twittering are but very humble kinds of melody, but I care not however lowly or merely imitative may be the degree of the divine faculty of music that a human creature may be endowed with, I'll warrant him, there will be something like real nobility of heart or mind about him, let his vocation and whereabouts in this ill-arranged world be what it may. And truly, so much might, without hesitancy, be affirmed of twittering Tim the tailor of Horncastle. With all his knowledge of the ill-will borne towards him by Prim the puritan, Tim Swallow-whistle would have sprung off his shop-board like a bounding fawn, and with a bounding heart of joy, to have done the envious Jedediah a good turn. Yet, with all his bountiful good-nature, Tim possessed a fair share of shrewdness. He had lived long enough to learn that over-weening envy usually overshoots its mark, and most severely punishes its own voluntary slaves. Thus, of all men in the little town of Horncastle, Tim Swallow-whistle was least disturbed at what every one talked of as a scandalous matter, namely, the envy and malevolence of Jedediah Prim, the religious tailor. "Never mind; 'every dog has his day!'" Tim would reply, and twitter away again, to every successive tale his neighbours brought him, about what Prim said, and what Prim did: for you never knew of two neighbours being "at outs" in your life, but a host of voluntary messengers, on either side, could be found to fetch and carry fuel to maintain the heat between them.

What moved Tim Swallow-whistle more than any other event in his life was the fact of Prim the puritan being made overseer of the poor, and throwing Tim's poor old grandmother entirely upon his maintenance. The aged woman had nearly reached a century of years; and, at the mere cost of half-a-crown per week to the parish, was nursed in her second childhood by Tim's widowed mother, who lived in a little cottage, hard by her son. Tim had willingly, nay eagerly, contributed to supply the wants of the two aged women through all the difficulties felt by a man situated as he was, with an increasing family, for there was not a grain of sordidness in his noble nature; but it was no joke for poor Tim to have the entire weight of the burthen cast upon him. For several days after the announcement was formally made him—and pious Prim took care to have the devilish satisfaction of performing the annoying business himself—poor Tim suspended his twittering, and "struck his needle dead" in a savage mood of reflection. Tim's reflection ended, however, in the way that, with such a heart, it was natural for it to end,—in the manly resolve that he would work the very skin off his fingers, and go without a meal every day in the week, rather than permit his old grandmother to want. "Every dog has his day!" echoed Tim, recovering his wonted elasticity of spirits; "Jedediah Prim will not be overseer of the poor for the parish of Horncastle to all eternity;" and away he burst into a mellifluous twitter that floated, in the form of "Merrily danced the Quakers," gaily across the street, and entered into the very "porches of the ears" of Prim the puritan, much to the deadly annoyance of that heart of envy. During the continuance of Tim's overture for the day, there entered into his cottage a travelling tinker, who besought leave of the tailor to light his pipe.

"Ay, lad, and welcome," blithely answered Tim; and away he went twittering his old burthen of "Merrily danced the Quakers."

"Marry, good faith, maister!" said the tinker, folding his arms and looking as if he felt inclined for 'a bit of chat,' as they say in Lincolnshire; "why, that was the very tune my poor old mother was so fond of! I can't help feeling fond on't, d'ye know, maister; for my mother was a good mother to me—the Lord rest her soul!" and the hardy tinker's voice faltered in a way that showed his heart had its tender place, notwithstanding his rough exterior. Tim's twittering was arrested; the tinker had touched him on a tender chord, and his whole heart vibrated, sympathetically.

"Sit you down a while, friend, and smoke your pipe quietly," said Tim, pointing to a seat near his shop-board; "I'll tell our Becky to get out the copper kettle for you to mend as soon as she comes down stairs; we haven't used it these three years for want o'mending."

"And times have been too hard for you to have it mended before, I reckon, maister," said the tinker.

"Nay, as for that," replied Tim with a smile and a shake of the head, "they're not much mended now; I find it to be only a cross-grained world, I'll assure you, friend; but I always make it a maxim to take things as easy as I can; for, as I always say, 'Every dog has his day,' and among the rest of the poor dogs one doesn't know but one's own turn to have a day may come yet."

"Right, maister, right!" ejaculated the tinker, drawing a full breath at his pipe, and puffing out a full cloud of satisfaction; "there's sartainly a comfort in thinking so: yet it isn't a pleasing thing to be striving to do one's best, and to pay every one their own, and yet to be trampled upon, as poor folks too commonly are in this world."

"Very true, friend," chimed in Tim Swallow-whistle, assenting readily to a remark that reminded him so strikingly of his own experience; "very true: there's nothing that gives an honest man any uneasiness equal to that: for my part, I've no wish to be richer or loftier than my neighbours; but I must say the man must feel it hard who's ill-used, after striving to do the best he can for everybody as well as himself."

"Well, you see, maister, it shows that what the Scripter says is true, 'that money is the root of all evil,'" rejoined the tinker; "for you'll always observe that a man begins to trample upon you as soon as he happens to begin to get on in the world a little better than yourself."

"'Tis too often the case, friend," said Tim, not fully approving of the tinker's sweeping remark, but still feeling the forceful truth of it in his own case; "and yet I can't understand how it should be so."

"At any rate, maister," said the tinker, interrupting the other, "one can understand one thing: that if things could be put more on a level in this world, there wouldn't be such foul dealings as we see now; for if one man wasn't allowed to be so much stronger in the pocket than another, all men would be more likely to gain respect; all this bowing and scraping of poor to rich would be at an end, I mean."

"Why, yes," interjected the tailor, stopping his needle when it was but half way through the cloth and feeling a disposition to be abstracted; "that's true enough—true enough, friend: but for my part I don't see how the vast difference between the rich and the poor is to be remedied. You see it's the nat'ral course of things: some folk are idle, and others unlucky; while money makes money, when a man once gets hold on't—that is, if he tries to turn it over, and takes care of it as it gathers."

"Just so, maister; that's all very true as far as it goes," rejoined the tinker; "but I think that's not exactly what the parson calls the end o' the chapter. I'm but a plain man, and no great scholar; but I always take Brimmijem and Sheffield in my yearly round, and one hears a bit o' long headed-talk, maister, now and then in such places: you'll excuse me if I tell you a little of what I think about these things."

"Prythee, don't mention that, in that sort of a way," said Tim, hastily; "I'll assure thee that there's nobody likes a man that speaks his mind better than I do."

"Thank ye, maister," continued the tinker; "then I'll tell you what I think: I think there ought to be a law to compel folk that make money so fast to use it in making their fellow-creatures happy, instead of spending it on finery and foolishness."

"Why, you would make folks kind and good by law then, friend! Hum! I can't see," disputed Tim, again suspending his needle, and looking very metaphysically upon the corner pane of his shop window, "I can't see how that scheme would be likely to succeed. Excuse me, friend, but I think you are talking about may-be's that'll never fly."

"Look ye, now, maister," resumed the tinker, laying down his pipe, raising his hand with the fore-finger pointed, and looking greatly in earnest to substantiate his theory; "this is my point: God Almighty made us all of the same flesh and blood, not some of china and the rest of brown marl: he made us to live like brothers; and if one had better wit than the rest, it was his duty to use it for the benefit of all his brothers and sisters, as well as for his own benefit. So, if a man by money makes money, since he can't do that without the help of other folk, I maintain that that money ought to be distributed, and all that it will buy, for the benefit of all, but more especially for the comfort of those whom the money-maker made use of in making his money."