CHAPTER IV.

THE MAGISTRATES' MEETING.

UPTOWN was not worthy of the name of town; it could hardly be called a large village. But it was the centre of a wide agricultural district, and a small market was held in it once a week, chiefly for the sale of butter and eggs, as the farmers carried their corn to a more important market farther away, in the county town. A magistrates' meeting was held at Uptown at stated intervals; and there was a police-station just outside the village, provided with two cells, but seldom occupied, in one of which Ishmael had been safely kept since noonday on Saturday.

Heavy-hearted still, though with a fund of secret courage bearing her up, Ruth entered Uptown on the Monday morning. There was more stir than usual about the single street, as there always was on the days when the magistrates came to hear the trivial cases which awaited their judgment. Round the inn where the justices' room was, there were several groups of somewhat discreditable folks hanging about in readiness.

Nutkin was within the inn-yard, eagerly talking to one of the magistrates who had arrived before the others, and had just dismounted from his horse. Ruth saw him, but it was as if she did not see him, so absorbed was her whole soul in watching for Ishmael to come along the road between the town and the police-station. She was half unconscious of the increasing crowd and stir, as the magistrates rode in one after another; and the magistrates' clerk bustled down from his house with his blue bag full of papers. Mrs. Clift had arrived too with Elsie; and Squire Lansdowne was gone into the large room of the inn; but she only half knew it.

At last Ishmael appeared, walking beside a policeman, who kept his hand tightly on his collar, as if to remind him it was of no use to try to escape. But could this sullen, scowling lad, with rough uncombed hair and tear-stained face, be Ishmael? He was close beside her, yet he never raised his eyes; and he would have passed her by, if she had not cried out in a very lamentable voice, "Oh, Ishmael, Ishmael!"

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"It's my mother," he said, as the policeman tightened his grasp of his collar. "Don't you come inside, mother dear. It 'ud do no good, and it 'ud make me cry. You go home again now you've seen me to say good-bye. You'll loose me to kiss my mother?" he added, looking at the policeman.

"Ay, if you're sharp about it," he answered.

For a minute the young boy, scarcely more than a child, and the bent, grey-haired woman stood with their arms fondly clinging about each other. Ruth felt as if she could not let him go; it seemed but a few days since he was but a baby in her bosom; and now he was a prisoner charged with an offence against the laws of his country. But Ishmael loosened his hands and let himself be led away inside the magistrates' room.

Then she sat down on the lowest step of a horse-block below its open window, through which she could hear the hum of voices coming indistinctly to her ear. How long it was she did not know, but a gaily-dressed, flaunting young woman came to her at length, and spoke in a pitying tone.

"Don't you take on, Mrs. Medway," she said; "you're a good woman, I know, but luck's agen you. Nutkin was very hard on him; and they've give him three months in the county gaol."

"Is it my Ishmael?" she asked, looking up with a wandering and vacant expression in her eyes.

"To be sure," answered the young woman. "'Ishmael Medway, thirteen years of age; three months for stealing pheasant's eggs.'"

Ruth heard no more, saw nothing more. But bending forward, as if to lift herself upon her feet, she fell heavily on the pavement, in a deep swoon. There was a crowd clustering about her, when Ishmael was marched out of the inn by the policeman; he looked round in vain for a last glance at his mother's face.

"It were best for her to go away," he said to himself, with a sob; "but I should ha' liked to ha' seen her again."

He felt as if he were going to die in the prison to which they were sending him, and as if he should never see his mother's face again. His young soul was in a bewilderment of grief and amazement. He had heard himself described as an incorrigible thief and poacher. Everything had gone against him: the notorious character of his father and elder brothers; his own admission of having haunted the woods until he knew every spot in them; even his tearful confession that he knew he had no right to the eggs, and did not know why he should take them then for the first time. All had been against him.

He was going away to gaol, a shame and disgrace to his poor mother. To-day too; the very day he was to have begun to earn his own living, and relieve her from the burden he had been upon her. He would be a worse trouble to her than any of the others had been, even than his father, who came home every night either drunk or angry. What could he ever do to make it up to her now? He could do nothing better than to die.

It was late before Ruth reached home in the evening, and she found her husband awaiting her return, sober and sullen; a hard, tyrannical old man, who looked upon her as a silent and spiritless drudge.

"So," he exclaimed, as she stepped feebly and weariedly over the threshold, "this is what it's come to: thy fine lad's got hisself into gaol! This comes o' book-learnin' and psalm-singin', eh? He brings shame on all on us. Ne'er a one on us was iver up afore the justices till now; and they say at the Labour in Vain as he's got three months. And serve him right, I say. I takes sides with Nutkin, and th' squire, and the justices, as are ivery one on 'em gentlemen. If I'd a bit o' land, I'd hang every poacher as set foot on it. And a young little lad o' his age! What 'll he be when he's a man? I'd ha' sent him to Botany Bay, I would. I'm on the side o' justice. And if ever Ishmael crosses o'er that door-sill agen, I'll thresh him to within an inch o' his life! I'll break ivery bone in his body! And thine, too," he shouted, with growing fury, "if thee don't open that cursed mouth o' thine, and say somethink!"

"I'm ill, Humphrey," she answered, meekly; "I swoonded away dead when they told me on it."

"Swoonded!" he repeated, sneeringly. "Don't tell me. It's only born ladies as can do that, not a workin' woman like thee. But swound or no swound, just hearken to my words. Ishmael niver sets his foot over yon door-sill. I'll harbour no poachers or gaol-birds under my roof."

Very quietly Ruth went on lighting the fire and boiling the kettle. It was a relief to her to be at home again, out of the stir and buzz of the little town, and out of sight of inquisitive eyes. Even her husband's threats and jeers could not altogether spoil the sense of having found rest at her own fireside.

And when he was gone, the unbroken silence of the dark hut suited her. Her harassed soul could recollect itself now. Even in dense darkness our eyes, by eager gazing, begin to see a little, and so in the deepest trouble the soul, by its earnest yearning towards God, begins to discern light. As Ruth sat alone in the dark hut, there came back to her memory the old story in the Bible, from which she had taken a name for her youngest boy. She thought of Hagar in the wilderness, a runaway slave, fleeing from her mistress, and how God heard her affliction; and how once more she was driven into the wilderness, wandering up and down homeless, until her son Ishmael was dying of thirst, and his mother cast him under a shrub to die, and went away out of sight—a good way off—lest she should see the death of her child; and how God heard the voice of the lad, and once again sent His angel to succour Hagar.

Ruth shut her aching and swollen eyelids with a feeling of comfort and awe, as she whispered, "'Thou God seest me.'"

Yes, God saw; God knew. There was unspeakable consolation in that. She felt no bitterness of heart, even against Nutkin. She had nothing to say against the law that had sent Ishmael to prison. She did not try to justify her boy; he had done wrong, though in lightheartedness and thoughtlessness, not in malice. None of these things occupied her simple mind. God had seen all; and He knew all about it. It was in that thought she was to find consolation and strength. She must endure, as seeing Him who is invisible.