forbid the ladies the house--there was too much to be
made out of the pickings from their presents--so Judith did not lose the
cheerfulness and comfort they brought her; but Dan laid up the proposal
in his mind as another cause of hatred and ill-will to Captain Carbonel.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN.

SCALES OF JUSTICE.

"Thou hast appointed justices of peace to call poor men before them
for matters they were not able to answer."--_Shakespeare_.

When the Parable of the Wheat and the Tares was spoken, the Blessed and
only Wise foresaw the extreme difficulty of rooting out the tares
without injuring the wheat, when the work is done by the ignorant or
hasty hands of the servants.

So it was at Uphill. Captain Carbonel was made a county magistrate, and
thus had more power in his hands, and his most earnest wish and prayer
was to use it for the good of the parish. But things were very
difficult. At the vestry, the farmers agreed with him that Barton and
Morris ought not to have additional parish relief, great strong men as
they were, who had both refused extra hours of labour offered by
farmers, of a kind they did not like, and now demanded help on the score
of their large families. In fact, it had become the custom to demand
relief for every fresh child that was born, and the men were often idle
in consequence. There were men with many children who had never come on
the parish, because they were trustworthy and sober, and their wives
were thrifty. Each magistrate could point to several of these, and each
knew how the small and struggling ratepayers were oppressed. Nor could
it be fair that these men should be maintained in idleness or dawdling
at the expense of the hard-working small shopkeepers.

Every gentleman on the bench who had weakly yielded before, and had
given an order to whoever tramped over to ask for it, was very glad to
have some one who would speak out, and take the burthen of unpopularity.
So the order was not given, and Barton and Morris walked home
disappointed, but not till they had each taken a pint or two of beer at
the "Blue Lion" on their way home, uttering many curses on "that there
Gobbleall." Captain Carbonel did not hear those same curses, but as he
rode home he saw the two men stagger out of the "Blue Lion," refreshed
not only by their own pints, but by those of sympathisers. And the
sight did not make him sorry for what he had done, knowing well that
George Hewlett, Cox the cobbler,