“Dost mind how you could jerk a trout ashore with a bramble, and not ruffle the stream, Charl?” a deposed keeper was saying. “’Twas at that I caught ’ee once, if you can mind?”

“That I can.  But the worst larry for me was that pheasant business at Yalbury Wood.  Your wife swore false that time, Joe—­O, by Gad, she did—­there’s no denying it.”

“How was that?” asked Jopp.

“Why—­Joe closed wi’ me, and we rolled down together, close to his garden hedge.  Hearing the noise, out ran his wife with the oven pyle, and it being dark under the trees she couldn’t see which was uppermost.  ‘Where beest thee, Joe, under or top?’ she screeched.  ’O—­under, by Gad!’ says he.  She then began to rap down upon my skull, back, and ribs with the pyle till we’d roll over again.  ’Where beest now, dear Joe, under or top?’ she’d scream again.  By George, ’twas through her I was took!  And then when we got up in hall she sware that the cock pheasant was one of her rearing, when ’twas not your bird at all, Joe; ’twas Squire Brown’s bird—­that’s whose ’twas—­one that we’d picked off as we passed his wood, an hour afore.  It did hurt my feelings to be so wronged!...  Ah well—­’tis over now.”

“I might have had ’ee days afore that,” said the keeper.  “I was within a few yards of ’ee dozens of times, with a sight more of birds than that poor one.”

“Yes—­’tis not our greatest doings that the world gets wind of,” said the furmity-woman, who, lately settled in this purlieu, sat among the rest.  Having travelled a great deal in her time she spoke with cosmopolitan largeness of idea.  It was she who presently asked Jopp what was the parcel he kept so snugly under his arm.

“Ah, therein lies a grand secret,” said Jopp.  “It is the passion of love.  To think that a woman should love one man so well, and hate another so unmercifully.”

“Who’s the object of your meditation, sir?”

“One that stands high in this town.  I’d like to shame her!  Upon my life, ’twould be as good as a play to read her love-letters, the proud piece of silk and wax-work!  For ’tis her love-letters that I’ve got here.”

“Love letters? then let’s hear ’em, good soul,” said Mother Cuxsom.  “Lord, do ye mind, Richard, what fools we used to be when we were younger?  Getting a schoolboy to write ours for us; and giving him a penny, do ye mind, not to tell other folks what he’d put inside, do ye mind?”

By this time Jopp had pushed his finger under the seals, and unfastened the letters, tumbling them over and picking up one here and there at random, which he read aloud.  These passages soon began to uncover the secret which Lucetta had so earnestly hoped to keep buried, though the epistles, being allusive only, did not make it altogether plain.

“Mrs. Farfrae wrote that!” said Nance Mockridge. “’Tis a humbling thing for us, as respectable women, that one of the same sex could do it.  And now she’s avowed herself to another man!”