There was a murmur of general approval at this piece of wisdom. But a dark-faced man who sat in a corner and who had listened in silence up to that point, suddenly lifted his pot of ale, drank from it, and set it down again with an emphatic bang.
“Tell ’ee all what I do think, and no two ways about it!” he exclaimed. “This here shooting o’ Master Guy Markenmore what you’re all talking so free about and don’t get no forrarder—I do think as how Mistress Braxfield, up to Woodland Cottage, did shoot he! That’s what I do say. Mistress Braxfield, as kept this house once—she done it!” Blick turned sharply from the bar; the other men turned towards the speaker; a dead silence fell over the room, broken at last by a solemn voice.
“You’m best to mind what you’re a-saying of, Bill Carver!” it said. “There be law for them as slanders folk—you’ll be took to ’sizes! Beside, Master Guy, he be shooted with a revolver. Mistress Braxfield ain’t got no revolvers, and couldn’t shoot one if she had!”
“Ain’t she?” exclaimed Bill Carver, derisive and contemptuous. “Then I tells ’ee that she have! Many’s the time I seen her a-shooting with that, early of a morning when I bin about them downs. I seen her shoot a score o’ times at foxes what comes arter her chickens. And when you says who shot Master Guy Markenmore, I says Mistress Braxfield did shoot he! That’s what I say—and don’t care who hears me say it! Ain’t I free to say what I do think?—’tis a free country!”
A period of tense silence followed on this bold declaration, ended at last by a shuffling of feet and a succession of dry, deprecating coughs. Then a voice came out of the smoke-laden depths of a far corner.
“’Tis all very well to say as how this here is a free country,” remarked the voice, “but I do allow as ’tain’t so free as that a man may call murder agin a woman! That there be what they call libel and slander, what folks goes to ’sizes for—it be a punishable matter that. I count as how you’ll git yourself into sore tribulation, Bill Carver, if so be as you do go up and down a-saying that Mistress Braxfield her did murder pore young Muster Guy—so you will!”
“Ain’t a-saying as how her did murder he!” retorted Bill Carver. “What I says is that ’tis my belief as how her did shoot he dead—main different matter! Might ha’ bin done accidental, like!”