Stranica 171 [171]
OCR
123 ntly down again. ar td was sil dome for the—for the best, sir!" answered Giles. “I am sure I thought it was the boy, or Í wouldn't have meddled with him. Iam not of an inhuman disposition, sir.” “Thought it was what boy?" inquired the senior officer. Giles. * They—they certainly had a boy.” “Well, do you think so now?” inquired Blathers. “Think what, now?’ replied Giles, looking vacantly.at his questioner. “Think it’s the same boy, stupidhead?” rejoined Mr. Blathers impatiently. s [ don’t know; I really don’t know,” said Giles, with a rueful countenance. “T could nt swear to him.” “ What do you think?” asked Mr. Blathers. “I don’t know what to think,” replied poor Giles. “Idon’t think it is the boy; indeed I’m almost certain that it isn’t. You know it can’t be.” “Has this man been a-drinking, sir?” inguired Blathers, turning to the doctor. “What a precious muddle-headed chap you are!" said Duff, addressing Mr. Giles with supreme contempt. Mr. berne had been feeling the ient’s pulse during this short dialogue ; t he now rose from the chair by the bedside, and remarked, that if the officers had any doubts upon the subject they would perhaps like to step into the next room, and have Brittles before them. Acting upon this suggestion, they accordingly adjourned to a neighbourin apartment, where Mr. Brittles being called in, involved himself and his respected superior in such a wonderful maze of fresh contradictions and impossibilities as tended to throw no particular light upon anything save the fact of his own strong mystification ; except, indeed, his declarations that he should n’t know the real boy if he were put before him that instant; that he had only taken Oliver to be he because Mr. Giles had said he was, and that Mr. Giles had five minutes previously admitted in the kitchen that he began to be very much afraid he had been a little too hasty. Among other ingenious surmises, the uestion was then raised whether Mr. iles had really hit anybody, and upon examination of the fellow pistol to that which he had fired, it turned out to have no more destructive loading than gun the ball about ten minutes before. Upon no one, however, did it make a greater who, after labouring for some hours under the fear of having mortally wounded a fellow-creature, eagerly caught at this new idea, and favoured it to the utmost. Finally, the officers, without troublin themselves very much about Oliver, left the Chertsey constable in the house, and took up their rest for that night in the town, promising to return next morning. With the next morning there came a rumour that two men and a boy were in the cage at Kingston, who had been apprehended over-night under suspicious circumstances; and to Kingston Messrs. Blathers and Duff journeyed accordingly. The suspicious circumstances, however, resolving themselves, on investigation, into the one fact that they had been discovered sleeping under a haystack, which, although a great crime, is only punishable by imprisonment, and is, in the merciful eye of the English law, and its comprehensive love of all the King’s subjects, held to be no satisfactory proof in the absence of all other evidence, that the sleeper or sleepers have committed burglary accompanied with violence, and have therefore rendered themselves liable to the punishment of death,— Messrs. Blathers and Duff came back again as wise as they went. In short, after some more examination, and a great deal more conversation, a neighbouring magistrate was readily induced to take the joint bail of Mrs. Maylie and Mr. Losberne for Oliver’s appearance if he should ever be called upon; and Blathers and Duff, being rewarded with a couple of guineas, returned to town with divided opinions on the subject of their expedition: the latter gentleman, on a mature consideration of all the circumstances, inclining to the belief that the burglarious attempt had originated with the Family Pet, and the former being equally disposed to concede the full merit of it to the great Mr. Conkey Chickweed. Meanwhile Oliver gradually threve and prospered under the united care of Mrs. Maylie, Rose, and the kind-hearted Mr. Losberne. If fervent prayers gushing from hearts overcharged with gratitude be heard in heaven,—and if they be not, what prayers are?—the blessings which the orphan child called down upon them, sunk into their souls, diffusing
