.

"Why, that blackguard whom you would employ--Master Tom Cutter,"
answered Mr. Shanks. You know I always set my face against it, John; and
now----"

"Peach!" cried John Ayliffe, "Tom Cutter will no more peach than he'll
fly in the air. He's not of the peaching sort."

"Perhaps not, where a few months' imprisonment are concerned," answered
Mr. Shanks; "but the matter here is his neck, and that makes a mighty
difference, let me tell you. Now listen to me, John, and don't interrupt
me till I've done; for be sure that we have got into a very unpleasant
mess, which we may have some difficulty in getting out of. You sent over
Tom Cutter, to see if he could not persuade young Scantling, Lord
Selby's gamekeeper, to remember something about the marriage, when he
was with his old father the sexton. Now, how he and Tom manage their
matters, I don't know; but Tom gave him a lick on the head with a stick,
which killed him on the spot. As the devil would have it, all this was
seen by two people, a laborer working in a ditch hard by, and
Scantling's son, a boy of ten years old. The end of it is, Tom was
instantly pursued, and apprehended; your good uncle, Sir John, was
called to take the depositions, and without any remand whatever,
committed our good friend for trial. Tom's only chance is to prove that
it was a case of chance-medley, or to bring it under manslaughter, as a
thing done in a passion, and if he thinks that being employed by you
will be any defence, or will show that it was a sudden burst of rage,
without premeditation, he will tell the whole story as soon as he would
eat his dinner."

"I'd go over to him directly, and tell him to hold his tongue," cried
John Ayliffe, now fully awakened to the perils of the case.

"Pooh, pooh! don't be a fool," said Mr. Shanks, contemptuously. "Are you
going to let the man see that you are afraid of him--that he has got you
in his power? Besides, they will not let you in. No, the way must be
this. I must go over to him as his legal adviser, and I can dress you up
as my clerk. That will please him, to find that we do not abandon him;
and we must contrive to turn his defence quite another way, whether he
hang for it or not. We must make it out that Scantling swore he had been
poaching, when he had done nothing of the kind, and that in the quarrel
that followed, he struck the blow accidentally. We can persuade him that
this is his best defence, which perhaps it is after all, for nobod