"Is not this an excess of zeal, Cobb?" remonstrated Mr. Carnegie.
"Suppose you let the ass off this time, and consider him warned not to
do it again?"
"Sir, my instructions is not to pass over any infringement of the new
h'act. Straying is to be put down," said Cobb stiffly.
"This here ass have earned his living honest a matter of eight year, and
naught ever laid agen his character afore by high nor low," pleaded
Gampling, growing pathetic as authority grew more stern. "Her ladyship
and the doctor will speak a good word for him, and there's others as
will."
"Afore the bench it may be of vally and go to lowering the fine," said
the invincible exponent of the law; "I ain't nothing to do with that."
"I'll tell you where it is, Cobb," urged Gampling, swelling into anger
again. "This here ass knows more o' nat'ral justice than the whole
boiling o' new h'acts. He'd never be the man to walk into her ladyship's
garden an' eat up her flowerbeds: raason why, he'd get a jolly good
hiding if he did. But he says to hisself, he says, when he sees a nice
bite o' clover or a sow-thistle by the roadside: "This here's what's
left for the poor, the fatherless, and the widder--it ain't much, but
thank God for small mercies!'--an' he falls to. Who's he robbed, I
should like to know?"
"You must ask the admiral that when you come up before the magistrates
on Saturday," rejoined Cobb severely--his professional virtue sustained,
perhaps, by the presence of witnesses.
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