They Hanged My Saintly Billy Read Online Free PDF Page A

and return to the surgery.
    At last William had a row with Peter Smirke, Mr Tylecote's other assistant. Smirke was a little sprig of a man, who dressed in a dandiacal fashion and was received in the village society. The story they now tell at The Clifford Arms is that Smirke once saw William emerging from Jane's cottage at an hour he should have been elsewhere, and scolded him very severely. William put him off with a story of having dr opped in to ask whether Mr Vicker staff, her step father , could supply him with a few seedlings for the garden at The Yard—they always have seedlings of all sorts to spare at Shoughborough Park—and Smirke thought no more of the matter. William, however, told Jane the story, and she now began making eyes at Smirke, and even one day invited him into the cottage on some excuse and arranged for her mother to surprise him stealing a kiss. Jane pretended, for William's benefit, that this had been done to prevent Smirke from bringing any accusation against him at Mr Tylecote's; but her true object was to make William jealous.
    In this she succeeded. William, being kept short of money, could not afford to dress so smartly as Smirke. But he went upstairs and poured acid over all Smirke's fine clothes and linen; finishing with a new pair of dress-boots that had just arrived from the bootmaker in time for a ball at The Clifford Arms, where Jane was to help the landlady with the service. William took a penknife and slashed those boots into ribbons. That was true lover's jealousy. All being fair in love and war, he never owned up to the deed, though it could only have been his.
    I don't know the whole story of how William ran away with Jane to Walsall; but I'll tell as much as I do know. Mr Tylecote was not in the habit of going to church except at Christmas, Easter, and Harvest Thanksgiving, and for the funerals of his richer patients. William, on the other hand, always attended the early morning Communion Service, and again Matins. At Matins, he would arrange for a lad to come as if from Mr Tylecote, and call him out a few minutes before the sermon—the parson over at Haywood being a very powerful and long-winded preacher—and go off to see the lass.
    One Sunday, halfway through a sermon on the Last Days, the new Mrs Vicke rstaff nudged old Vickerstaff, who was a careful, plodding sort of fellow, saying that she felt faint and would he take her home? So Vickerstaff starts up from his doze and takes her home, where he finds William in bed with his stepdaughter, as had been arranged. There i s a great row and Vickerstaff th r ea tens William with a fowling-piece if he will not swear, in the hearing of them all, to marry Jane. William solemnly swears, and is talked into visiting Walsall, to plead with brother Joseph for his blessing on the match, the lass coming along too. So, early on the Monday, William asks Mr Tyle cote's leave to go for a day's rabbit shooting; Mr Tyle cote agrees, and William hires a nag from The Clifford Arms, meets Jane a mile out of town, pulls her up behind him, and trots off.
    Nothing is heard of the pair for some days; but at la st comes a letter to Mr Tylecote , apologizing heartily for having been called away to Walsall on sudden business, and asking him to forward a letter which he enclosed, to a Mr Lomax of Stafford. Mr Tylecote steps across the road and consults William's brother-in-law, Mr Heywood, who says: 'I don't like the look of this , and they say in the village that the scamp has gone off with Vickerstaff's stepdaughter. I think, Mr Tylecote, you would be in your rights, as his employer, to open the enclosure.' So they unseal the envelope, which is to ask Mr Lomax as a great favour to redeem William from an inn at Walsall, where he is being held in pawn for a bill which he cannot pay, because Joseph will do naught for him. Now, this Mr Lomax was a wealthy young man, his schoolfellow at Bonney's, whom William had once saved from a sad scrape.
    The seal broken,