then," muttered the Bantam, trying a middle course.

This brought down on him the farmer, who roared, "Thought! Ye thought!
What d'ye mean? Speak out, and don't be thinkin'. Thought? What the
devil's that?"

"How could he see who it was on a pitch-dark night?" Richard put in.

"Thought!" the farmer bellowed louder. "Thought--Devil take ye, when ye
took ye oath on't. Hulloa! What are ye screwin' yer eye at Mr. Feverel
for?--I say, young gentleman, have you spoke to this chap before now?"

"I?" replied Richard. "I have not seen him before."

Farmer Blaize grasped the two arms of the chair he sat on, and glared
his doubts.

"Come," said he to the Bantam, "speak out, and ha' done wi't. Say what
ye saw, and none o' yer thoughts. Damn yer thoughts! Ye saw Tom Bakewell
fire that there rick!" The farmer pointed at some musk-pots in the
window. "What business ha' you to be a-thinkin'? You're a witness?
Thinkin' an't ev'dence. What'll ye say to morrow before magistrate!
Mind! what you says today, you'll stick by to-morrow."

Thus adjured, the Bantam hitched his breech. What on earth the young
gentleman meant he was at a loss to speculate. He could not believe that
the young gentleman wanted to be transported, but if he had been paid
to help that, why, he would. And considering that this day's evidence
rather bound him down to the morrow's, he determined, after much
ploughing and harrowing through obstinate shocks of hair, to be not
altogether positive as to the person. It is possible that he became
thereby more a mansion of truth than he previously had been; for the
night, as he said, was so dark that you could not see your hand before
your face; and though, as he expressed it, you might be mortal sure of
a man, you could not identify him upon oath, and the party he had taken
for Tom Bakewell, and could have sworn to, might have been the young
gentleman present, especially as he was ready to swear it upon oath.

So ended the Bantam.

No sooner had he ceased, than Farmer Blaize jumped up from his chair,
and made a fine effort to lift him out of the room from the point of his
toe. He failed, and sank back groaning with the pain of the exertion and
disappointment.

"They're liars, every one!" he cried. "Liars, perj'rers, bribers, and
c'rrupters!--Stop!" to the Bantam, who was slinking away. "You've done
for yerself already! You swore to it!"

"A din't!" said the Bantam, doggedly.

"You swore to't!" the farmer vocifera