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The men he employed were for the most part drawn from the dregs sheep-stealers, cattle-thieves, smugglers, many of them ex-convicts a fierce, unruly lot, hating all law and order, yet submitting for the sake of that same precious yellow dust that they ground from the foundation stones of the world. Personally, Fortescue was known but to the very few, but his methods were known to all.
What can be more deserving of our best efforts for relief than a country gentleman like yourself, we'll say, of a nominal L5,000 a-year, compelled to keep up an establishment, pay for his fox-hounds, support the whole population by contributions to the poor-rates, support the whole church by tithes; all justice, jails, and prosecutions of the county-rates; all thoroughfares by the highway-rates; ground down by mortgages, Jews, or jointures; having to provide for younger children; enormous expenses for cutting his woods, manuring his model farm, and fattening huge oxen till every pound of flesh costs him five pounds sterling in oil-cake; and then the lawsuits necessary to protect his rights, plundered on all hands by poachers, sheep-stealers, dog-stealers, churchwardens, overseers, gardeners, gamekeepers, and that necessary rascal, his steward.
Two of Miss Allerton's, one of old Pearson's of the Cat Walk, and one of Mrs. Moulton's. Four in all during three nights. No trace is left of them at all, and the countryside is buzzing with rumours of gipsies and of sheep-stealers. But there is something more serious than that. Young Armitage has disappeared also.
The crime was discovered, and the wretched woman sentenced to be hanged, along with the usual dockful of sheep-stealers, Whiteboys, shop-lifters, and cattle-houghers, who, to the amount of seven or eight at a time, were invariably 'turned off' within four-and-twenty hours after their sentences at each assizes.
The use of the ashes by sheep-stealers was to suck up and remove stains of blood, which were certain to be left in cutting up the animal. Sufficient proof was found in the cottage to condemn the honest thief to be hung; great exertions were, however, made in his behalf; and principally, it is supposed, on account of his character for carrying large sums of money untouched, he was saved.
From this point to the Bosco the scenery is described as a dreary region, but the tract of the wood showed some beautiful places resembling an English park, with old oaks and abundant fern. "Here we found flocks browsing; they are much exposed to sheep-stealers, who do not touch travelers, calculating with justice that men do not carry much money to the summit of Etna."
Let us fancy for a moment, how quickly, under similar political circumstances, a moveable Spencean brigade might be collected in any district of England from poachers, sheep-stealers, gypsies, incendiaries, and those whose latent love of mischief might be drawn out by proper encouragement, and we may find reason not to condemn the French peasantry in general, as sharers in the outrages which they probably abominated, but could not prevent.
There are people whom I find it very comfortable to quarrel with. I shouldn't at all like not to quarrel with the Brownbies, and I'm not at all sure it mayn't come to be the same with Mr. Giles Medlicot." "The Brownbies live by sheep-stealing and horse-stealing." "And Medlicot means to live by employing sheep-stealers and horse- stealers. You can go if you like it.
Viva los Estados Unidos! Run, you sheep-stealers, we are safely out of your hands!" Upon reaching the summit of the divide the whole war-party stood revealed, far to our right, out of rifle-shot. Plainly, our presence was a great surprise to them. Although they greatly outnumbered us, the country was too open for their system of warfare, and they were poorly armed.
Brooke in arranging "documents" about hanging sheep-stealers, was exemplifying the power our minds have of riding several horses at once by inwardly arranging measures towards getting a lodging for himself in Middlemarch and cutting short his constant residence at the Grange; while there flitted through all these steadier images a tickling vision of a sheep-stealing epic written with Homeric particularity.
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