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'Tis my belief 'e's got to do with that 'ere case of Tom Barton's they're makin' such a fuss and do about at Coln. We shall all be 'ung for a set o' sheep-stealing ruffians." "Thee be quite right, William," put in the parson "I thought a' looked a bit suspicious. If I was you, squire, I'd clap the baggage into Northleach gaol, and exercise the justice of the peace agin un for an idle varmint."
Without taking any account of what in those days must have been looked upon as quite minor offences such as simple theft, sheep-stealing, fraud, extortion, or harbouring felons there were eleven men and five women put upon their trial for burglary, eight men and four women were murdered; there were five fatal fights, three men and two women being killed in the frays; and, saddest of all, there were five cases of suicide, among them two women, one of whom hanged herself, the other cut her throat with a razor.
Did Neptune raise his winds and waves against you when you were at sea, or did your enemies make an end of you on the mainland when you were cattle-lifting or sheep-stealing, or while fighting in defence of their wives and city? Answer my question, for I have been your guest. Do you not remember how I came to your house with Menelaus, to persuade Ulysses to join us with his ships against Troy?
At sunset they would go home to a supper of more barley bannocks, washed down with hot water flavoured with some aromatic herb or weed, and then straight to bed to get warm, for there was little firing. It was not strange that sheep-stealing was one of the commonest offences against the law at that time, in spite of the dreadful penalty. Hunger made the people reckless.
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.
Here the captain laid before us six or seven of the leading journals of Bivouac, in all of which his late vote was treated with quite as little ceremony as if it had been an unequivocal act of sheep-stealing. I looked at my friend the brigadier for an explanation. After running his eye over the articles in the journals, the latter smiled, and cast a look of commiseration at our colleague.
Justice Park commented on the heavy appearance of the calendar. It was not so much the number of the offenders that excited his concern as it was the nature of the crimes with which they were charged. The worst crime in this instance was sheep-stealing! "Again, this same Mr.
'T is to be at Casterbridge gaol to-morrow the man for sheep-stealing the poor clock-maker we heard of, who used to live away at Anglebury and had no work to do Timothy Sommers, whose family were a-starving, and so he went out of Anglebury by the highroad, and took a sheep in open daylight, defying the farmer and the farmer's wife and the farmer's man and every man Jack among 'em.
'But mark ye me, friend, that we may have nae colly- shangie afterhend, these are the fees that I always charge a swell that must have his lib-ken to himsell: Thirty shillings a week for lodgings, and a guinea for garnish; half a guinea a week for a single bed; and I dinna get the whole of it, for I must gie half a crown out of it to Donald Laider that's in for sheep-stealing, that should sleep with you by rule, and he'll expect clean strae, and maybe some whisky beside.
Carey became the friend of his neighbour, Thomas Robinson, evangelical rector of St. Mary's, to whom he said on one occasion when indirectly charged in humorous fashion with "sheep-stealing:" "Mr. Robinson, I am a dissenter, and you are a churchman; we must each endeavour to do good according to our light.
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