They traced him back to London and lost him there; but five years afterwards Hiram Linklater, for that was his famous name, swung in earnest for murder of a woman in the Peak of Derbyshire.  Always for rural districts he was and a great one for the wonders of nature.  He told the chaplain of his adventures at Little Silver, and expressed penitence afore he dropped.  He also said that nothing in his whole career had given him more pleasure than to hear how his Christmas Eve effort down in Devonshire had miscarried after all.  And he pointed out how, by the will of God, his own gift to the little boy had saved him!

And he was said to have made a brave end; which no doubt ain’t as difficult as people imagine.

’Tis the like of Hiram Linklater I reckon, as keep up the sentiment of approval for capital punishment; because even in the softest head, it must be granted that a baby-poisoner is the sort that’s better under the earth than on it.

No.  II

THE RETURNED NATIVE

Of course, every human being did ought to be interesting to their fellow creatures, and yet, such is the weakness of human nature, that we all know folk so cruel dull in mind and body that an instinct rises in us to flee from ’em at sight and never go where there’s a chance of running across ’em.  It ain’t Christian, but everybody knows such deadly characters none the less, and you might say without straining charity, that Mrs. Pedlar was such a one.

Being a widow she had that triumphant fact to show how somebody had found her interesting enough to wed, and there’s no doubt, by God’s all-seeing goodness, the dull people do find each other out and comfort one another.

Jane Pedlar couldn’t have been particular dreadful to Noah Pedlar else he wouldn’t have married her and stopped with her, for they was thirty years wed before he dropped, and though she was too dull to have any childer, or ever larn to cook a mutton chop so as a man could eat it with pleasure, yet she held him.  He didn’t leave much money, because he never earned much, yet he did a pretty good stroke for Jane before he died, and got his employer, Farmer Bewes, to let Jane bide safe in her cottage for her lifetime.

There weren’t nothing written between master and man; but Nicholas Bewes, who owned the place, came to see Noah Pedlar on his death-bed, and when Noah put up a petition for Mrs. Pedlar to be allowed to bide rent free to her end, Bewes, who was a bit on the sentimental side and minded that the old chap had worked for him and his father before him for more than half a century, promised that Jane might have the use of the house for her life.

Noah Pedlar had never rose to be farmer’s right-hand man or anything like that.  He was a humble creature, faithful unto death, but no use away from hedge-tacking and such rough jobs; yet he’d done his duty according to his limits, however narrow they might be, and so he got his way on his death-bed, and, in the sudden surprise that such a landmark as Noah was going home, Farmer Bewes gave his promise.