nt. So it must not go back for a day or two. I do love
the Fenwicks, dearly, dearly, both of them. They are almost, if not
quite, perfect. And yet I am glad to be at home."

CHAPTER X.

CRUNCH'EM CAN'T BE HAD.

Mr. Fenwick had intended to have come home round by Market Lavington,
after having deposited Miss Lowther at the Westbury Station, with
the view of making some inquiry respecting the gentleman with the
hurt shoulder; but he had found the distance to be too great, and
had abandoned the idea. After that there was not a day to spare till
the middle of the next week; so that it was nearly a fortnight after
the little scene at the corner of the Vicarage garden wall before he
called upon the Lavington constable and the Lavington doctor. From
the latter he could learn nothing. No such patient had been to him.
But the constable, though he had not seen the two men, had heard
of them. One was a man who in former days had frequented Lavington,
Burrows by name, generally known as Jack the Grinder, who had been
in every prison in Wiltshire and Somersetshire, but who had not,--so
said the constable,--honoured Lavington for the last two years, till
this his last appearance. He had, however, been seen there in company
with another man, and had evidently been in a condition very unfit
for work. He had slept one night at a low public-house, and had then
moved on. The man had complained of a fall from the cart, and had
declared that he was black and blue all over; but it seemed to be
clear that he had no broken bones. Mr. Fenwick therefore was all but
convinced that Jack the Grinder was the gentleman with whom he had
had the encounter, and that the grinder's back had withstood that
swinging blow from the life-preserver. Of the Grinder's companions
nothing could be learned. The two men had taken the Devizes road
out of Lavington, and beyond that nothing was known of them. When
the parson mentioned Sam Brattle's name in a whisper, the Lavington
constable shook his head. He knew all about old Jacob Brattle. A very
respectable party was old Mr. Brattle in the constable's opinion.
Nevertheless the constable shook his head when Sam Brattle's name was
mentioned. Having learned so much, the parson rode home.

Two days after this, on a Friday, Fenwick was sitting after breakfast
in his study, at work on his sermon for next Sunday, when he was told
that old Mrs. Brattle was waiting to see him. He immediately got up,
and found hi