"
"Be you wanting to hang yourself before the trial then?" said the
constable, trying to make a joke of it.
"I couldn't do that," said Johnnie, simply, "seeing my hands be fast and
you'd be standing by."
"No, no, Johnnie, 'tis nought but just foolishness. What do you say,
Daddy?"
The old man turned round with a look of sudden rage in his grey face
which startled Lampard; but he said nothing, he only opened and shut his
mouth two or three times without a sound.
Meanwhile the pony had been going slower and slower for the last thirty
or forty yards, and now when they were abreast of the tree stood still.
"What be stopping for?" cried Lampard. "Get on--get on, or we'll never
get to Salisbury this day."
Then at length old Blaskett found a voice.
"Does thee know what thee's saying, Master Lampard, or be thee a
stranger in this parish?"
"What d'ye mean, Daddy? I be no stranger; I've a-known this parish and
known 'ee these nine years."
"Thee asked why I stopped when 'twas the pony stopped, knowing where
we'd got to. But thee's not born here or thee'd a-known what a hoss
knows. An' since 'ee asks what I says, I say this, 'twill not hurt 'ee
to let Johnnie Budd stand one minute by the tree.
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