They Hanged My Saintly Billy Read Online Free PDF

Mr Tylecote could not in honesty send on the letter to Mr Lomax; nor did he feel inclined to redeem William himself. Mr Heywood therefore rode over to Rugeley to tell old Mrs Palmer what was afoot. She could not be found, having gone out visiting a friend, but not left word which friend it was; so Walter and George set off on their own to fetch William home from Walsall. They came upon him with the lass, at dinner in the inn, quietly cracking walnuts and sipping his port. George behaved in a hectoring manner, and rudely ordered him back to Rugeley. William replied that he would not stand for such insolence from a younger brother and, rising from his chair, offered to fight him; but Walter quoted the text: 'Be ye kindly and affectionate one to another in brotherly love,' and reconciled the two. Then George goes off to pay the bill, and William to collect his gear. But in the inn-yard he gives both brothers the slip, takes chaise to Stafford, where he leaves the lass, and makes his way alone to Rugeley.
    The lass had money in her purse, no less than a hundred pounds of old Vickerstaff's savings, which she had stolen, in case William should have no luck with Joseph. She sees now that the game is up: if Mrs Palmer tells Joseph the truth about the thefts at Liverpool, which have hitherto been kept from him—for Joseph has heard no more of the lass than that William wants to make her his wife —William will lose his seven thousand pounds, and she may as well call the marriage off. But she can't go ba ck to Haywood and face old Vickerstaff's wrath . So she writes secretly to Peter Smirke, saying that she has been deserted by William upon her confessing that she loves another, namely Smirke. Then Peter Smirke at once leaves Mr Tylecote, believe it or not, and marries her. They set off togeth er for Australia, where Smirke sets up in practice at Sydney, and nothing is heard of either for many a year.
    Ay, that is how it went. And Mrs Palmer forgave William, once more. Perhaps Tom Clewley, at The Shoulder of Mutton, will be able to fill in some of the gaps in the tale that I have left on purpose.
    Chapter III
    MR DUFFY'S SAMPLE BOX
    R UGELEY, a long, straggling, overgrown village which k ranks, however, as a town, is kept very clean, and occupied by some persons extremely well-to-do in the world. It is about the size of Twickenham, but seems to have enlarged itself without any apparent design beyond the whim of the bricklayer and the varying price of building sites. Commercial travellers call it a good place for business, and declare that the accounts here are particularly safe. Lovers of bustle and crowded pathways might well find the quietude of Rugeley 's cottages (with their large leaden lights and heavy shutters) not a little oppressive, but many visitors profess themselves charmed by its almost deserted streets. Housewives may be seen at the windows busily plying the needle behind rows of red geraniums, while their menfolk are away in the fields, or hard at work at Bladen's brass-foundry or Hatfield's manufactury.
    The Town Hall occupies the centre of the Market Place; with its justice-room in the upper storey and, on the ground-floor, a literary institution next to a Savings Bank. Three or four London-looking shops are supported by plenty of countrified ones: butchers' with only a half-sheep as stock-in-trade; grocers' that sell bread; tailors' that keep stays and bonnets for sale.
    Soon after you go out of the railway station, to cross the bridge by a flour mill, leaving The Yard and Rugeley's two churches behind, you reach a bend of the road where stands the shop that has most benefited by what are alleged to have been William Palmer's crimes—Mr Keeyes, the undertaker's. You are now in Market Street and approaching The Talbot Arms Hotel, generally still called The Crown, as before it assumed its present lordly name. You must be careful to distinguish it from The Talbot Inn, a much smaller place, which you have already