"to deserve being turned adrift?
If your honour will hear the whole of the story about this business, I
don't believe you'll turn me out on the cold world, after being on that
land nigh-hand forty years."

"'Hear!' I have heard enough about it; your son dared to lift a hand to
mine, and--and I'll have no tenant on my estate that will ever venture
upon such an outrage as that;--it was a great compliment to you for my
son to admire your bantams, or anything on your farm, without his being
subjected to such an assault."

"I don't want to excuse my boy," said old Meyers, "for touching the
young squire; and right sorry I am that he ever lifted a hand to him;
but begging your honour's pardon, the young squire provoked him to it,
and he did a great deal more than just admire my little girl's
bantams.--Come, Jim, speak up, and tell the squire all about it."

"Ay, speak up and excuse yourself, you young rascal, if you can," said
the angry squire; "and if you can't, you'll soon find your way into the
inside of a prison for this. Talk of poaching! what is it to an assault
upon the person?"

"I will speak up, then, your honour, since you wish it," said Jim
Meyers, "and I'll tell the whole truth of how this came about." And then
he told the whole story of the young squire having wanted to buy the
bantams, and on his not being permitted to do so, of his endeavouring to
take them by force. "And when I wouldn't let him carry away my sister's
birds, he flew on me like a game cock, and in self-defence I struck him
as I did."

"You said I murdered Jacob Dobbin," interrupted James Courtenay.

"Yes, I did," answered Jim Meyers, "and all the country says the same,
and I only say what every one else says; ask anybody within five miles
of this, and if they're not afraid to speak up, they'll tell just the
same tale that I do."

"Murdered Jacob Dobbin!" ejaculated the squire in astonishment; "I don't
believe my son ever lifted a hand to him,--you mean the crippled boy
that died some time ago?"

"Yes, he means him," said Jim Meyers' father; "and 'tis true what the
lad says, that folk for five miles round lay his death at the young
squire's door, and say that a day will come when his blood will be
required of him."

"Why, what happened?" asked the squire, beginning almost to tremble in
his chair; for he knew that his son was given to very violent tempers,
and was of a very arbitrary disposition; and he felt, moreover, within
the depth