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There were two prisoners, Petty the ratcatcher, who had attempted some resistance and had been knocked down by Griff's horse, and a young lad in a smock-frock who had fallen off the wall and hurt his knee, and who blubbered piteously, declaring that them chaps had forced him to go with them, or they would duck him in the horse- pond.
The doctor was absent for a short time, and then returned accompanied by a man and a boy dressed in the smock-frock of farm labourers. The doctor commanded silence. Leslie's heart gave a quick throb, and he felt a tremor run through his whole frame as his eye alighted upon the group at the principal's desk.
It was asleep itself on the moss-grown cow-shed; on the group of white ducks nestling together with their bills tucked under their wings; on the old black sow stretched languidly on the straw, while her largest young one found an excellent spring-bed on his mother's fat ribs; on Alick, the shepherd, in his new smock-frock, taking an uneasy siesta, half-sitting, half-standing on the granary steps.
As the crook had absorbed most of Gabriel's money, he attempted, and carried out, an exchange of his overcoat for a shepherd's regulation smock-frock. This transaction having been completed, he again hurried off to the centre of the town, and stood on the kerb of the pavement, as a shepherd, crook in hand.
The latter wore a smock-frock, while the former, perhaps, sported a blue coat with brass buttons, and had rather a better kind of head-dress, and ambled along on a little steady cob, that knew at which ale-house to call for the regular allowance, quite as well as his master. But as regards talk—which was chiefly of bullocks and pigs—well, there really was no very great difference after all.
As for the country fellow in the smock-frock, they took no further notice of him after quitting the carriage. Had they known his business in Wreckumoft that night, they might, perchance, have bestowed upon him very earnest attention. As it was, they went off to the Blue Boar Tavern and ordered three Welsh rabbits and three pots of porter. Meanwhile Kenneth took the road to Seaside Villa.
The fiery eyes and inflamed countenance of the man in the smock-frock showed that he was half intoxicated; urging on the horses with his voice, his heels, and his whip, he paid no attention to the remonstrances of the soldier, who had great difficulty in restraining his own animals, and was obliged to follow the irregular movements of the carman.
A lost boy, extremely calm and small, sitting by the fire, whom we now confide to a constable to take home, for the child says that if you show him Newgate Street, he can show you where he lives a raving drunken woman in the cells, who has screeched her voice away, and has hardly power enough left to declare, even with the passionate help of her feet and arms, that she is the daughter of a British officer, and, strike her blind and dead, but she'll write a letter to the Queen! but who is soothed with a drink of water in another cell, a quiet woman with a child at her breast, for begging in another, her husband in a smock-frock, with a basket of watercresses in another, a pickpocket in another, a meek tremulous old pauper man who has been out for a holiday 'and has took but a little drop, but it has overcome him after so many months in the house' and that's all as yet.
We wonder if he saw him with his own hands building his hut on the frozen plains of Siberia, clothed, not in rich furs and jewels, but bearded and in long, coarse, gray smock-frock; his daughter, the betrothed of an Emperor, clad, not in ermine, but in sheep-skin. Perhaps the lesson with his master the Carpenter of Saardam served him in building his own shelter in that dread abode.
There was a fiery vehemence about Kenneth's manner and look, and a tone of command in his voice that there was no resisting, especially when it was coupled with such physical strength, so the countryman heaved a sigh and took off his smock-frock and hob-nailed boots, while the supposed highwayman took off his coat and shoes.
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