“If,” said I, “she were to plead guilty, the great probability is that the jury would believe they were all guilty—­very probably they are; and most certainly in that case they would all be hanged.”  I therefore strongly advised that the woman should stand her trial “with the others,” which she did.  In the end they all got off! the evidence not being sufficiently clear against any.

It was a strange mingling of evil and good in one breast—­of diabolical cruelty and noble self-sacrifice.

I leave others to work out this problem of human nature.

CHAPTER XXIV.

CHARLES MATHEWS—­A HARVEST FESTIVAL AT THE VILLAGE CHURCH.

The sporting world has no greater claim on my memory than the theatrical or the artistic.  I recall them with a vividness that brings back all the enjoyments of long and sincere friendships.  For instance, one evening I was in Charles Mathews’s dressing-room at the theatre and enjoying a little chat when he was “called.”

“Come along,” said he; “come along.”

Why he should “call” me to come along I never knew.  I had no part in the piece at that moment.  But he soon gave me one.  I followed, with lingering steps and slow, having no knowledge of the construction of the premises; but in a moment Mathews had disappeared, and I found myself in the middle of the stage, with a crowded house in front of me.  The whole audience burst into an uproar of laughter.  I suppose it was the incompatibility of my appearance at that juncture which made me “take” so well; but it brought down the house, and if the curtain had fallen at that moment, I should have been a great success, and Mathews would have been out of it.  In the midst of my discomfiture, however, he came on to the stage by another entrance as “cool as a cucumber.”  He told me afterwards that he had turned the incident to good account by referring to me as “Every man in his humour,” or, “A bailiff in distressing circumstances!”

I was visiting the country house of a respectable old solicitor, who was instructing me in a “compensation case” which was to be heard at Wakefield.

“I don’t know, Mr. Hawkins,” said he on Sunday morning, “whether you would like to see our little church?”

“No, thank you,” I answered; “we can have a look at it to-morrow when we have a ‘view of the premises.’”

“I thought, perhaps,” said Mr. Goodman, “you might like to attend the service.”

“No,” said I, “not particularly; a walk under the ‘broad canopy’ is preferable on a beautiful morning like this to a poky little pew; and I like the singing of the birds better than the humming of a clergyman’s nose.

“Very well,” he said; “we will, if you like, take a little walk.”

With surprising innocence he inflicted upon me a pious fraud, leading me over fields and meadows, stiles and rustic bridges, until at last the cunning old fox brought me out along a by-path and over a plank bridge right into the village.  Then turning a corner near a picturesque farmhouse, he smilingly observed, “This is our church.”