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He didn't rightly remember afterwards what he called him, but 'twere your lordship or your worship, he was sure. "Yes, certainly, you are here to speak," said the judge, and Bawcombe then gave an account of his interview with Elijah and of the conversation outside the house.
"A brutal case!" he said, and that was the end, and Bawcombe got his six weeks' sick pay and expenses, and about three pounds besides, being his share of the society's funds which Elijah had been advised to distribute to the members. And that was the end of the Winterbourne Bishop club, and from that time it has continued without one.
Ellerby never went into their cottages, and the shepherd and his wife concluded that it was because in both cases the children were rather puny, sickly-looking little things and were never very clean. The carter's wife, too, was a slatternly woman. One day when Mrs. Ellerby came in to see Mrs. Bawcombe the carter's wife was just going out of the door, and Mrs.
Bawcombe, who never in his life associated with the village idlers and frequenters of the alehouse, had no connexion with these men. His expeditions were made alone on some dark, unpromising night, when the regular poachers were in bed and asleep.
Ellerby appeared displeased, and before leaving she said, "I hope, Mrs. Bawcombe, you are not going to mix too freely with your neighbours or let your children go too much with them and fall into their ways." They also observed that when she passed their neighbours' children in the lane she spoke no word and appeared not to see them.
It was formerly one of the most important sheep-fairs in the country, but for the last two or three decades has been falling off and is now of little account. When Bawcombe was shepherd at Doveton it was still great, and when he first went there as Mr. Ellerby's head-shepherd he found himself regarded as a person of considerable importance at the Castle.
When Bawcombe had taken up his new place at Doveton, his master, Mr. Ellerby, watched him for a while with sharp eyes, but he was soon convinced that he had not made a mistake in engaging a head-shepherd twenty-five miles away without making the usual inquiries but merely on the strength of something heard casually in conversation about this man.
The old gentleman pulled some money out of his pocket and said, "Give him this half-crown, and thank him for the good sport I've had to-day." But after the coin had been given the giver still remained standing there, thinking, perhaps, that he had not yet sufficiently rewarded the man; and at last, before turning away, he shouted, "Bawcombe, that's not all. You'll get something more by and by."
From that moment he refused to obey, and Bawcombe, after exhausting all his arts of persuasion, gave it up and did as well as he could without his assistance. That evening after folding-time he by chance met a shepherd he was well acquainted with and told him of the trouble he was in over Tory.
Bawcombe returned that the dog had put him out, and now the dog was dead he had killed him in his anger, and he would trim no more lambs that day. He had said it and would keep to what he had said. Then the farmer got angry and said that the dog had a very good nose and would have been useful to him to take rabbits.
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