CHAPTER SEVENTEEN.
UNDER CLOUDS.
Thorpeley was not badly hurt, so the doctor said when he came; but, as usual, he added, "If it had been an inch or two more to the right an important vessel would have been divided, and he would have bled to death." But if the constable was not badly wounded, though the injury caused by a bullet passing through his leg was an ugly one, the reputations of Dick Winthorpe and Tom Tallington had received such ugly wounds that their fathers found it difficult to get them cured.
For Thorpeley stuck to his first story, that he suspected the two boys to be engaged in some nefarious trick, and he had watched them from the time they borrowed the wheelwright's punt.

He went on to describe how he had offended them by keeping his eye upon their movements, and told how they had tried to smother him by leading him into a dangerous morass, while just at dusk, as he was watching their boat, he saw them start towards him, and evidently believing that they were unseen from where they had tied their punt, they had deliberately taken aim at him and shot him.
The squire questioned him very sharply, but he adhered to everything.
He swore that he saw them thrust the punt away, and go into the misty darkness; and then when they had heard his cries, they came back and landed, evidently repentant and frightened, and then helped him down to the boat.
"But," said the squire, "it might have been two other people in a punt who shot at you." "Two others!" shouted the man; "it weer they, and I heered 'em laughing and bragging about it as I lay theer in the bottom o' the boat nearly in a swownd, bud I could hear what they said." This charge was so serious that, as a matter of course, there was a magisterial inquiry, which was repeated as soon as the constable was sufficiently well to limp into the justice-room in the little town where he had been removed as soon as the doctor gave permission, the neighbourhood of the Toft and Hickathrift having grown uncomfortably warm.
At that last examination the magistrates shook their heads, and, after hearing a great deal of speaking, decided that Thorpeley must have been deceived in the darkness, and the charge was dismissed.
In those days the law had two qualities in an out-of-the-way place that have pretty well died out now.

These qualities were laxity and severity--the disposition to go to extremes; and in this case some idea of the way in which the work of petty sessions was carried on will be grasped when it is told that after the examination the chairman of the bench of magistrates, an old landholder of the neighbourhood, shook hands with the squire, and then less freely with Farmer Tallington.
"Look here, you two," he said; "we've let off these two young scamps; but you had better send them to sea, or at all events away from here." "I don't understand you, sir," said the squire hotly.
"I can't help that," was the gruff reply.

"You take my advice.

Send 'em away before there's more mischief done.