back with the shakums so bad that you could hear his
teeth chattering a mile away when the fit was on him. The conversation
would have lingered long on the symptoms of "shakums," or in other
words of ague, had not some one called to mind the bill on the
church-door about the deserter. Then the tongues were set wagging
afresh. Two guineas were a lot of money, they said, but soldiers was
often badly served, and 'twas no wonder they runned away. But it
wasn't well to have strange men about the place, least of all sojers,
for they never learned no good.

The mention of strange men about the place of course brought back the
subject of the idiot, and then the thought occurred to one of the women
that he might be the deserter in question. The idea was at once taken
up by her companions, and the more they talked, the more likely it
seemed to them. The man had been driven from his regiment probably
because of his evil doings, and was come to Ashacombe to plague them;
and all agreed that it would be very pleasant to earn two guineas by
the catching of him. Mrs. Fry went home brimful of this new notion and
poured it out to Mrs. Mugford, who listened with unusual interest, and
without either contradiction or interruption, which was a most unusual
thing. But at last she broke out with much earnestness:

"You'm right, you may depend, Mrs. Fry; you'm right. That mazed man is
the man that they'm a-sarching for; and it's my belief that he isn't
mazed at all but so well in his head as you and I be,--just pretending
like. And you'm right about that Brimacott too, and I do hope that
every one will let mun know that he's not welcome in Ashacombe. He's a
prying man and a tale-bearing man, that's what I believe he is, and all
to deceive her ladyship and keep friends with the witch. But we'll
catch that mazed man for all his pretending, and there there will be
two guineas for you and me."

Any one else but Mrs. Fry might have thought it strange for the
Corporal to be called a tale-bearer by the very woman who had told
tales against her; but Mrs. Fry was not a clever woman, and after all
she had suffered under Lady Eleanor's tongue through the Corporal's
report. Lady Eleanor knew that if the Corporal told her anything that
went on in the village, which he very rarely did, it was right that she
should know it; but that was not Mrs. Fry's opinion. So the two agreed
that the Corporal was an enemy to the village, though, as is usual