Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 9, 2025
"When we sailed from Skye he was under sentence, and they weren't over much given to reprieve for sheep-stealing in those days. It was in consequence o' that that I came here." "That's a very tolerable ghost story," said the Doctor. "Have you got another? If you have, I shouldn't mind hearing it, as it will beguile the way."
The jury, pleased and very much surprised at being directed to let a man off, obediently returned a verdict of Not Guilty, and Sweet Vi'lets returned from Salisbury triumphant, to be congratulated on his escape by all the villagers, who, however, slyly winked and smiled at one another. Of sheep-stealing stories I will relate one more a case which never came into court and was never discovered.
Musicians of quality were, perhaps, needed in England; and as sheep-stealing is looked upon lightly by priests who love mutton, so do kings forgive infractions if they need the man. When William Herschel landed at Dover he had in his pocket a single crownpiece, and his luggage consisted of the clothes he wore, and a violin.
So that when this lonely rider was descried from the washing field over the low wall of the lane, the women made up their minds at once that it must be a justice of the peace, or some great rider of the Revenue, on his way to see Dr. Upandown, or at the least a high constable concerned with some great sheep-stealing.
'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.
It may be a shock to the reader to be brought down from a story of a great king and queen of England in the tenth century to the obscure annals of a yokel and his wife who lived in a Wiltshire village only a century ago; or even less, since my poor yokel was hanged for sheep-stealing in 1821.
They never would a-got him if they hadn't waited till dark and smoked him out, so one on 'em told me." He spoke as if the prisoner had been a rattlesnake or a sheep-stealing wolf. The mail-thief evidently overheard, for he dropped, with a cat-like movement, to the steel floor and stood looking at us through the bars from under his knit eyebrows, his eyes watching our every movement.
'Tis to be at Casterbridge jail to-morrow the man for sheep-stealing the poor clock-maker we heard of, who used to live away at Shottsford and had no work to do Timothy Summers, whose family were a-starving, and so he went out of Shottsford by the high-road, and took a sheep in open daylight, defying the farmer and the farmer's wife and the farmer's lad, and every man jack among 'em.
It was not so great a crime as sheep-stealing, for which men were hanged; taking a deer was punished with nothing worse than hard labour, as a rule. But Reed was never caught; he would labour his full time and steal away after dark over the downs, to return in the small hours with a deer on his back.
Debtors were few, while in England they were more numerous than the criminals; and in Amsterdam not a single person had been executed for ten years, whereas in Britain sheep-stealing and all sorts of petty offences were punished by hanging. From Holland Mr.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking