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Updated: July 18, 2025
The cowherd was completely upset by John Broom's mysterious disappearance, and he comforted himself as the farm-bailiff did, but to a larger extent. And Thomasina winked at many irregularities in consideration of the groans of sympathy with which he responded to her tears as they sat round the hearth where John Broom no longer lay.
The one-eyed sailor had told him that the captain always took orphans and poor friendless lads to be his cabin-boys, and John Broom thought what a nice kind man he must be, and how different from the farm-bailiff, who thought nobody could be trustworthy unless he could show parents and grand-parents, and cousins to the sixth degree.
After a certain lapse of time estimated as being half an hour the farm-bailiff had occasion to pass back along the same road. On reaching the stile, he heard an alarm raised, and entered the field to see what was the matter.
To Thomasina's stories of ghosts and gossip, he would add strange tales of smugglers on the near-lying coast, and as John Broom listened, his restless blood rebelled more and more against the sour sneers and dry drudgery that he got from the farm-bailiff. Nor were sneers the sharpest punishment his misdemeanours earned.
"Dinna mak him turn his head. Steady, lad! Grip wi' your feet. Spit on your pawms, man." Once the boy trod on a rotten branch, and as he drew back his foot, and it came crashing down, the farm-bailiff set his teeth, and Miss Kitty fainted in Thomasina's arms. "I'll reward anyone who'll fetch him down," sobbed Miss Betty.
"Fault-finders should be free of flaws," Thomasina would say with a prim chin. She had seen the farm-bailiff himself "the worse" for more than his supper beer. But there was one history which Thomasina was always loth to relate, and it was that which both John Broom and the cowherd especially preferred the history of the Lob Lie-by-the-fire. One's neighbours' ghosts and bogles are another matter.
At eleven years old he could not be trusted to scare birds, and at half that age the farm-bailiff's eldest child could drive cattle. "And no' just ruin the leedies in new coats and compliments, either, like some ne'er-do-weels," added the farm-bailiff, who had heard with a jealous ear of sixpences given by Miss Betty and Miss Kitty to their wasteful favourite.
My confidential conversation with you the other night was merely a preliminary to my telling you that for the future I did not expect you to toil as hard as you had hitherto done, for I wish you to perform a duty less laborious, but more responsible; you will for the future act as farm-bailiff." Norbert looked up suddenly into his father's face.
"It seems a pity we can't chain him to a perch, Miss Kitty," laughed the parson; "he would be safe then, at any rate." Miss Betty said afterwards that it did seem so remarkable that the parson should have made this particular joke on this particular night the night when John Broom did not come home. He had played truant all day. The farm-bailiff had wanted him, and he had kept out of the way.
Probably, however, they were both superior to others of the same station, as the husband, in process of time, became farm-bailiff to his employer a Mr Thomas Skottowe. This was about the year 1730, and the farm of which he had the management was called Airy-Holme, near Ayton, in Yorkshire.
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