It was about eleven o’clock when Gilmore passed through the wicket leading from the vicarage garden to the churchyard. The path he was about to take crossed simply a corner of the church precincts, as it came at once upon a public footway leading from the fields through the churchyard to the town. There was, of course, no stopping the public path, but Fenwick had been often advised to keep a lock on his own gate, as otherwise it almost seemed that the vicarage gardens were open to all Bullhampton. But the lock had never been put on. The gate was the way by which he and his family went to the church, and the parson was accustomed to say that however many keys there might be provided, he knew that there would never be one in his pocket when he wanted it. And he was wont to add, when his wife would tease him on the subject, that they who desired to come in decently were welcome, and that they who were minded to make an entrance indecently would not be debarred by such rails and fences as hemmed in the vicarage grounds. Gilmore, as he passed through the corner of the churchyard, clearly saw a man standing near to the stile leading from the fields. Indeed, this man was quite close to him, although, from the want of light and the posture of the man, the face was invisible to him. But he knew the fellow to be a stranger to Bullhampton. The dress was strange, the manner was strange, and the mode of standing was strange. Gilmore had lived at Bullhampton all his life, and, without much thought on the subject, knew Bullhampton ways. The jacket which the man wore was a town-made jacket, a jacket that had come farther a-field even than Salisbury; and the man’s gaiters had a savour which was decidedly not of Wiltshire. Dark as it was, he could see so much as this. “Good night, my friend,” said Gilmore, in a sharp cheery voice. The man muttered something, and passed on as though to the village. There had, however, been something in his position which made Gilmore think that the stranger had intended to trespass on his friend’s garden. He crossed the stile into the fields, however, without waiting,—without having waited for half a moment, and immediately saw the figure of a second man standing down, hidden as it were in the ditch; and though he could discover no more than the cap and shoulders of the man through the gloom, he was sure he knew who it was that owned the cap and shoulders. He did not speak again, but passed on quickly, thinking what he might best do. The man whom he had seen and recognised had latterly been talked of as a discredit to his family, and anything but an honour to the usually respectable inhabitants of Bullhampton.

On the further side of the church from the town was a farmyard, in the occupation of one of Lord Trowbridge’s tenants,—a man who had ever been very keen at preventing the inroads of trespassers, to which he had, perhaps, been driven by the fact that his land was traversed by various public pathways. Now a public pathway through pasture is a nuisance, as it is impossible to induce those who use it to keep themselves to one beaten track; but a pathway through cornfields is worse, for, let what pains may be taken, wheat, beans, and barley will be torn down and trampled under foot. And yet in apportioning his rents, no landlord takes all this into consideration. Farmer Trumbull considered it a good deal, and was often a wrathful man. There was at any rate no right of way across his farmyard, and here he might keep as big a dog as he chose, chained or unchained. Harry Gilmore knew the dog well, and stood for a moment leaning on the gate.

“Who be there?” said the voice of the farmer.

“Is that you, Mr. Trumbull? It is I,—Mr. Gilmore. I want to get round to the front of the parson’s house.”

“Zurely, zurely,” said the farmer, coming forward and opening the gate. “Be there anything wrong about, Squire?”

“I don’t know. I think there is. Speak softly. I fancy there are men lying in the churchyard.”

“I be a-thinking so, too, Squire. Bone’m was a growling just now like the old ’un.” Bone’m was the name of the bull-dog as to which Gilmore had been solicitous as he looked over the gate. “What is’t t’ey’re up to? Not bugglary?”

“Our friend’s apricots, perhaps. But I’ll just move round to the front. Do you and Bone’m keep a look-out here.”

“Never fear, Squire; never fear. Me and Bone’m together is a’most too much for ’em, bugglars and all.” Then he led Mr. Gilmore through the farmyard, and out on to the road, Bone’m growling a low growl as he passed away.

The Squire hurried along the high road, past the church, and in at the Vicarage front gate. Knowing the place well, he could have made his way round into the garden; but he thought it better to go to the front door. There was no light to be seen from the windows; but almost all the rooms of the house looked out into the garden at the back. He knocked sharply, and in a minute or two the door was opened by the parson in person.

“Frank,” said the Squire.

“Halloo! is that you? What’s up now?”

“Men who ought to be in bed. I came across two men hanging about your gate in the churchyard, and I’m not sure there wasn’t a third.”

“They’re up to nothing. They often sit and smoke there.”

“These fellows were up to something. The man I saw plainest was a stranger, and just the sort of man who won’t do your parishioners any good to be among them. The other was Sam Brattle.”

“Whew—w—w,” said the parson.

“He has gone utterly to the dogs,” said the Squire.

“He’s on the road, Harry; but nobody has gone while he’s still going. I had some words with him in his father’s presence last week, and he followed me afterwards, and told me he’d see it out with me. I wouldn’t tell you, because I didn’t want to set you more against them.”

“I wish they were out of the place,—the whole lot of them.”

“I don’t know that they’d do better elsewhere than here. I suppose Mr. Sam is going to keep his word with me.”

“Only for the look of that other fellow, I shouldn’t think they meant anything serious,” said Gilmore.

“I don’t suppose they do, but I’ll be on the look-out.”

“Shall I stay with you, Frank?”

“Oh, no; I’ve a life-preserver, and I’ll take a round of the gardens. You come with me, and you can pass home that way. The chances are they’ll mizzle away to bed, as they’ve seen you, and heard Bone’m,—and probably heard too every word you said to Trumbull.”

He then got his hat and the short, thick stick of which he had spoken, and turning the key of the door, put it in his pocket. Then the two friends went round by the kitchen garden, and so through to the orchard, and down to the churchyard gate. Hitherto they had seen nothing, and heard nothing, and Fenwick was sure that the men had made their way through the churchyard to the village.

“But they may come back,” said Gilmore.

“I’ll be about if they do,” said the parson.

“What is one against three? You had better let me stay.”

Fenwick laughed at this, saying that it would be quite as rational to propose that they should keep watch every night.

“But, hark!” said the Squire, with a mind evidently perturbed.

“Don’t you be alarmed about us,” said the parson.

“If anything should happen to Mary Lowther!”

“That, no doubt, is matter of anxiety, to which may, perhaps, be added some trifle of additional feeling on the score of Janet and the children. But I’ll do my best. If the women knew that you and I were patrolling the place, they’d be frightened out of their wits.”

Then Gilmore, who never liked that there should be a laugh against himself, took his leave and walked home across the fields. Fenwick passed up through the garden, and, when he was near the terrace which ran along the garden front of the house, he thought that he heard a voice. He stood under the shade of a wall dark with ivy, and distinctly heard whispering on the other side of it. As far as he could tell there were the voices of more than two men. He wished now that he had kept Gilmore with him,—not that he was personally afraid of the trespassers, for his courage was of that steady settled kind which enables the possessor to remember that men who are doing deeds of darkness are ever afraid of those whom they are injuring; but had there been an ally with him his prospect of catching one or more of the ruffians would have been greatly increased. Standing where he was he would probably be able to interrupt them, should they attempt to enter the house; but in the mean time they might be stripping his fruit from the wall. They were certainly, at present, in the kitchen garden, and he was not minded to leave them there at such work as they might have in hand. Having paused to think of this, he crept along under the wall, close to the house, towards the passage by which he could reach them. But they had not heard him, nor had they waited among the fruit. When he was near the corner of the wall, one leading man came round within a foot or two of the spot on which he stood; and, before he could decide on what he would do, the second had appeared. He rushed forward with the loaded stick in his hand, but, knowing its weight, and remembering the possibility of the comparative innocence of the intruders, he hesitated to strike. A blow on the head would have brained a man, and a knock on the arm with such an instrument would break the bone. In a moment he found his left hand on the leading man’s throat, and the man’s foot behind his heel. He fell, but as he fell he did strike heavily, cutting upwards with his weapon, and bringing the heavy weight of lead at the end of it on to the man’s shoulder. He stumbled rather than fell, but when he regained his footing, the man was gone. That man was gone, and two others were following him down towards the gate at the bottom of the orchard. Of these two, in a few strides, he was able to catch the hindermost, and then he found himself wrestling with Sam Brattle.

“Sam,” said he, speaking as well as he could with his short breath, “if you don’t stand, I’ll strike you with the life-preserver.”

Sam made another struggle, trying to seize the weapon, and the parson hit him with it on the right arm.

“You’ve smashed that anyway, Mr. Fenwick,” said the man.

“I hope not; but do you come along with me quietly, or I’ll smash something else. I’ll hit you on the head if you attempt to move away. What were you doing here?”

Brattle made no answer, but walked along towards the house at the parson’s left hand, the parson holding him the while by the neck of his jacket, and swinging the life-preserver in his right hand. In this way he took him round to the front of the house, and then began to think what he would do with him.

“That, after all, you should be at this work, Sam!”

“What work is it, then?”

“Prowling about my place, after midnight, with a couple of strange blackguards.”

“There ain’t so much harm in that, as I knows of.”

“Who were the men, Sam?”

“Who was the men?”

“Yes;—who were they?”

“Just friends of mine, Mr. Fenwick. I shan’t say no more about ’em. You’ve got me, and you’ve smashed my arm, and now what is it you’re a-going to do with me? I ain’t done no harm,—only just walked about, like.”

To tell the truth, our friend the parson did not quite know what he meant to do with the Tartar he had caught. There were reasons which made him very unwilling to hand over Sam Brattle to the village constable. Sam had a mother and sister who were among the Vicar’s first favourites in the parish; and though old Jacob Brattle, the father, was not so great a favourite, and was a man whom the Squire, his landlord, held in great disfavour, Mr. Fenwick would desire, if possible, to spare the family. And of Sam, himself, he had had high hopes, though those hopes, for the last eighteen months had been becoming fainter and fainter. Upon the whole, he was much averse to knocking up the groom, the only man who lived on the parsonage except himself, and dragging Sam into the village. “I wish I knew,” he said, “what you and your friends were going to do. I hardly think it has come to that with you, that you’d try to break into the house and cut our throats.”

“We warn’t after no breaking in, nor no cutting of throats, Mr. Fenwick. We warn’t indeed!”

“What shall you do with yourself, to-night, if I let you off?”

“Just go home to father’s, sir; not a foot else, s’help me.”

“One of your friends, as you call them, will have to go to the doctor, if I am not very much mistaken; for the rap I gave you was nothing to what he got. You’re all right?”

“It hurt, sir, I can tell ye;—but that won’t matter.”

“Well, Sam,—there; you may go. I shall be after you to-morrow, and the last word I say to you, to-night, is this;—as far as I can see, you’re on the road to the gallows. It isn’t pleasant to be hung, and I would advise you to change your road.” So saying, he let go his hold, and stood waiting till Sam should have taken his departure.

“Don’t be a-coming after me, to-morrow, parson, please,” said the man.

“I shall see your mother, certainly.”

“Dont’ee tell her of my being here, Mr. Fenwick, and nobody shan’t ever come anigh this place again,—not in the way of prigging anything.”

“You fool, you!” said the parson. “Do you think that it is to save anything that I might lose, that I let you go now? Don’t you know that the thing I want to save is you,—you,—you; you helpless, idle, good-for-nothing reprobate? Go home, and be sure that I shall do the best I can according to my lights. I fear that my lights are bad lights, in that they have allowed me to let you go.”

When he had seen Sam take his departure through the front gate, he returned to the house, and found that his wife, who had gone to bed, had come down-stairs in search of him.

“Frank, you have frightened me so terribly! Where have you been?”

“Thief-catching. And I’m afraid I’ve about split one fellow’s back. I caught another, but I let him go.”

“What on earth do you mean, Frank?”

Then he told her the whole story,—how Gilmore had seen the men, and had come up to him; how he had gone out and had a tussle with one man, whom he had, as he thought, hurt; and how he had then caught another, while the third escaped.

“We ain’t safe in our beds, then,” said the wife.

“You ain’t safe in yours, my dear, because you chose to leave it; but I hope you’re safe out of it. I doubt whether the melons and peaches are safe. The truth is, there ought to be a gardener’s cottage on the place, and I must build one. I wonder whether I hurt that fellow much. I seemed to hear the bone crunch.”

“Oh, Frank!”

“But what could I do? I got that thing because I thought it safer than a pistol, but I really think it’s worse. I might have murdered them all, if I’d lost my temper,—and just for half-a-dozen apricots!”

“And what became of the man you took?”

“I let him go.”

“Without doing anything to him?”

“Well; he got a tap too.”

“Did you know him?”

“Yes, I knew him,—well.”

“Who was he, Frank?”

The parson was silent for a moment, and then he answered her. “It was Sam Brattle.”

“Sam Brattle, coming to rob?”

“He’s been at it, I fear, for months, in some shape.”

“And what shall you do?”

“I hardly know as yet. It would about kill her and Fanny, if they were told all that I suspect. They are stiff-necked, obstinate, ill-conditioned people—that is, the men. But I think Gilmore has been a little hard on them. The father and brother are honest men. Come;—we’ll go to bed.”