'The matter is not with me, but with the magistrates.'

'My dear Louis, don't look so very wise and capable, or I shall think
it a very bad scrape indeed! Pray tell me what you have been about.'

'You know Sir Gilbert Brewster and Mr. Shoreland are rabid about the
little brook between their estates, of which each wishes to arrogate
to himself the exclusive fishing. Their keepers watch like the
Austrian guard on the Danube, in a life of perpetual assault and
battery. Last Saturday, March 3rd, 1847, one Benjamin Hodgekin, aged
fifteen, had the misfortune to wash his feet in the debateable water;
the belligerent powers made common cause, and haled the wretch before
the Petty Sessions. His mother met me. She lived in service here
till she married a man at Marksedge, now dead. This poor boy is an
admirable son, the main stay of the family, who must starve if he
were imprisoned, and she declared, with tears in her eyes, that she
could not bear for a child of hers to be sent to gaol, and begged me
to speak to the gentlemen.' He started up with kindling eyes and
vehement manner. 'I went to the Justice-room!'

'My dear! with the groundsel?'

'And the knitting-needles!'

On rushed the narration, unheeding trifles. 'There was the array:
Mr. Calcott in the chair, and old Freeman, and Captain Shaw, and fat
Sir Gilbert, and all the rest, met to condemn this wretched widow's
son for washing his feet in a gutter!'