The whole of the next day this evil company sat drinking in the “Red Lion.” Richard Mills, son of the man in whose turf-shed Chater lay chained by the leg, passing by, they hailed him and told him of what they had done; whereupon he said he would, if he had had the doing of it, have flung the man down Harting Combe headlong and broken his neck.
On this Monday night they all returned home, lest their continued absence might be remarked by the neighbours; agreeing to meet again at Rake on the Wednesday evening, to consider how they might best put an end to Chater.
When Wednesday night had come this council of murderers, reinforced by others, and numbering in all fourteen, assembled accordingly. Dropping into the “Red Lion” one by one, it was late at night before they had all gathered.
They decided, after some argument, to dispatch him forthwith, and, going down to the turf-shed where he had lain all this while, suffering agonies from the cruel usage to which he had been subjected, they unchained him. Richard Mills at first had proposed to finish him there. “Let us,” said he, “load a gun with two or three bullets, lay it upon a stand with the muzzle of the piece levelled at his head, and, after having tied a long string to the trigger, we will all go off to the butt-end, and, each of us taking hold of the string, pull it all together; thus we shall be all equally guilty of his death, and it will be impossible for any one of us to charge the rest with his murder, without accusing himself of the same crime; and none can pretend to lessen or to mitigate his guilt by saying he was only an accessory, since all will be principals.”
Thus Richard Mills, according to the story of these things told in horrid detail (together with a full report of the subsequent trial) by the author of the contemporary “Genuine History.” The phraseology of the man’s coldly logical proposals is, of course, that of the author himself; since it is not possible that a Sussex rustic of over a hundred and sixty years ago would have spoken in literary English.
Mills’s proposition was not accepted. It seemed to the others too merciful and expeditious a method of putting an end to Chater’s misery. They had grown as epicurean in torture as the mediæval hell-hounds who racked and pinched and burnt for Church and State. They were resolved he should suffer as much and as long as they could eke out his life, as a warning to all other informers.