Norton hill. It was he, no doubt, who early the following morning had
been seen lying (in a swoon, I should say) on the roadside grass by the
Brenzett carrier, who actually got down to have a nearer look, but drew
back, intimidated by the perfect immobility, and by something queer in
the aspect of that tramp, sleeping so still under the showers. As the
day advanced, some children came dashing into school at Norton in such
a fright that the schoolmistress went out and spoke indignantly to a
'horrid-looking man' on the road. He edged away, hanging his head, for
a few steps, and then suddenly ran off with extraordinary fleetness.
The driver of Mr. Bradley's milk-cart made no secret of it that he had
lashed with his whip at a hairy sort of gipsy fellow who, jumping up at
a turn of the road by the Vents, made a snatch at the pony's bridle. And
he caught him a good one too, right over the face, he said, that made
him drop down in the mud a jolly sight quicker than he had jumped up;
but it was a good half-a-mile before he could stop the pony. Maybe that
in his desperate endeavours to get help, and in his need to get in touch
with some one, the poor devil had tried to stop the cart. Also three
boys confessed afterwards to throwing stones at a funny tramp, knocking
about all wet and muddy, and, it seemed, very drunk, in the narrow deep
lane by the limekilns. All this was the talk of three villages for days;
but we have Mrs. Finn's (the wife of Smith's waggoner) unimpeachable
testimony that she saw him get over the low wall of Hammond's pig-pound
and lurch straight at her, babbling aloud in a voice that was enough to
make one die of fright. Having the baby with her in a perambulator, Mrs.
Finn called out to him to go away, and as he persisted in coming nearer,
she hit him courageously with her umbrella over the head and, without
once looking back, ran like the wind with the perambulator as far as the
first house in the village. She stopped then, out of breath, and spoke
to old Lewis, hammering there at a heap of stones; and the old chap,
taking off his immense black wire goggles, got up on his shaky legs