Democratic Sentinel, Volume 6, Number 24, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 July 1882 — DEAD NED. [ARTICLE]

DEAD NED.

A Tale of the Yorkshire Wolds. Fifty years ago the laws were not so thoroughly enforced as they are now upon the wild ranges of England called the Yorkshire Wolds. Few of the bu?y dwellers in populous London have any idea of their grandeur in a winter snowstorm, or of their beauty when an August sun pours down its rays upon stretches of waving corn, that lie liko sheets of gold along the ridges, fringed above with dark plantations. During the great exhibition of 1851, a few friends and I took a real holiday for once in our lives, and went for a week to see the wonderful things in London which the papers were so full of. We saw all that could be seen in that time, and we did not lose a moment, I assure you. But, after all, I saw nothing like our grand old hills. It was the first time that most. of us had been so far away from home. My tale? —O yes, that was what I storied to tell you; but. that was twentyfive years before our Loudon visit, when I was a young man, farming a hundred and sixty acres of land. I had occupied the farm about two years, renting at tlio same time a house in the nearest village, two miles away, for my wife and two children. The farm buildings consis e 1 of a barn, which went by the name of the Red Barn, it being built of red bricks ; an old six-horse stable, thatched with whins ; a fold-yard, paled around, and two or three wood-sheds. A goodBized house and better out-buildings were being built, but none of them were far enough advanced to be habitable for man or beast. A plantation of ash and spruce trees sheltered the farmstead from wind and storm, as it was situated high up on the hill-side. • Returning home rather later than usual one Saturday night trom our market town, a distance of twelve miles, I was told by the man who came out to take my horse that an accident had happened that afternoon. “What’s the matter, David?” I asked. “ Roger has run a fork into his foot,” was the answer. Roger was one of the horses. It appeared, on further questioning, that one of the largo steel forks, used for stacking in harvest time, had been carelessly laid upon the stable floor, and Roger, a farm horse, had run its prongs into his foot. The man thought it was a serious wound. “ What have you done to it ?” was my next question. “ Sent off for Coats. ” Coats was the veterinary Burgeon for the district. “Has he come?” “No, sir ; ho had gone to Melby.” Melby, I knew, was eighteen miles away across the country from Coats.’ home ; and, after that journey, he would not feel inclined, at 11 o’clock, on a cold winter night, to start again for another sixteen miles. Turning my horse’s head, I told David to go to bed, and I would ride up to the Red Ba’n. “ Shall I sit up for your horse?” he asked, yawning, tired from a long day’s exposure to cold and storm. “ No ; no one need wait for me ; ” and I started off. Fifteen minutes brought me to the stable-door; but I paused to let my heated mare drink from the pond clo e by, and as I stood I caught a murmur of human voices within the stable. Surprised, as not a man lived at the steading, I tried the door. It was fastened from the inside. I knocked, still holding my horse by the bjridle, the thought coming across my mind that Coats must have come straight here, without waiting for any one to assist him. There was no answer to my first summons, so I knocked and called again more loudly. “ What d’ye want?” demanded a gruff voice from the inside. “Want? I want in, to be sure. What are you doing there, I should like to know ? Open the door at once 1” “Likely !” was grunted back again, “ when we are worm and settled after a nasty, cold tramp.” Now I knew who my uninvited guests were. It is not every one who knows, or knew, of the existence of a class of mendicants, familiarly termed among us “ Wold Rangers,” a pest to the farmers, and a great dread to the inhabitants of outlying farms. They were constant pilferers; and rarely would work, though often applying for it. None of them was above poaching; and mo't of them had been to prison in some time or another. A few professed to be hawkers of some sort; but the majority begged from door to door. We had no policeman nearer than ten miles, and his face was almost as strange as the Shah’s in our district. These lawless wanderers rarely traveled alone, but were generally accompanied by a numerous following of women and children, a horse and cart or two, often a donkey, and two or three dogs. My visitors were in no particular hurry to comply with my reiterated demand for admittance, and their loud snojres were most irritating to hear from the outside. Again I vigorously pummeled the door with au asli sapling that I carried in my hand, and loudly stormed at their obstinacy. It was no use. as a growl was all the reply I got. As determined to be inside as they were to keep me out, I went back a few paces, then dashed open the door with my foot. The moonlight just shone in with sufficient light to enable me to see what a strange lot of bedfellows were grouped together among the straw; and the loose horse box was at the end of tho stable, •fight through the thick of them. I ordered them one and all to “ turn out.” An Irishman, who went by the nickname of “ Dead Ned,” lifted his fierce, shaggy face, and dared me, in strong language, to attempt to disturb them. “But my horse,” I reasoned; “I must see to him. ” But reason was drowned in the opposition of a dozen hoarse voices. I was young then, and reokless of danger; more so than I am now, on the ■wrong side of sixty. Incensed, I drew back from the open door, slipped the bridle over my thoroughbred’s neck, and struck her sharply across the flanks with

the ash sapling. It was the work of an instant. She bounded into Ihe stable door, and no sooner were her hoofs heard on the threshold than every creature inside leaped up, startled men, women and children rnshing out pell-mell. I lost no time in striking a light after their quick exit, to see after the wounded animal, leaving the one I had ridden to follow ner own devices, which she did by going outside again. The foot was iu a serious state, and evidently painful “Coats will never come to-night,”, J thought, “and something most be done ;” and to foment the swollen foot was the only thing that I could think of. I went outside again, allowing the disturbed women and children to return to the straw ; but requesting Dead Ned and some of the others to help me to heat some water. We drove three thick stakos into the bank, close beside the poDd, crammed plenty of sticks under the iron pot, and soon had a blazing fire. When the water was hot enough for our purpose, we carried it into the stable, and fomented the wounded foot. . The process eased the pain, and, after half an hour’s fomentation, I wrapped it up in cloths saturated with some healing oils which were kept in the stable. Oue of the men held the flickering candle, stuck on the top of a lantern; while other eight or ten more were grouped around, watching the proceedings, and giving occasional assistance As I was bandaging the foot, I caught a motion or sign not intended for me to see. It was a signal from Dead Ned—who, I jK’rceived to my horror, held in his hand the heavy irou gavelock that we had used to hammer the stakes into the ground—to another of his fraternity. Like a flush it came over me; how could l have been so reckless, so foolhardy, as to tuust myself alone aud unarmed among this ruffianly crew ? I grew hot and cold by turns as I remembered that I carried in my breast pocket £1(50. It was a large sum, you think, for a farmer to have about lnm; but you see it was not my own. That year I held the office of Income Tax Collector, and had taken the money with me to market to pay the Government Commissioners. 1 had made a mistake iu the hour appointed, and was too late, for they had finished and were gone; consequently, I brought the money back, intending to forward it on Monday. The occurrence had passed out of my mind before reaching home, then David’s news completely put everything else out of my head, until I caught the gleam of evil in Dead Ned’s eye. It was Dot so much the physical harm I feared, as the idea that they would not be contented with stunning or murdering me, but would rob the senseless body, and what would become of my wife and children, if my goods and chattels were sold to repay the lost Government taxes? Why, they would be turned out into the wide world homeless and unprotected. The bare thought made me tremble. I must not let them suspect that I had seen their signals. Oh ! the agony of that moment. Making one venture for home, wife and children, as well as life, I carelessly dropped the horse’s feet, telling them in a loud voice to keep the candle still until I fetched some more string, and walked out of the stable as deliberately as I possibly could. Once out, I looked for the bay mare that had carried me up. She was leisurely nibbling some short grass a few yards from the door. “Jess, Jess, good lass !” I cried, softly, and very gently approaching her, as I knew that if she bolted, it was good by to life for me. Fortunately, she allowed me to catch her, and not s moment too soon, for my unwelcome visitors had followed me, and a glance at their low, villainous faces as I dashed off proved that they were full of rage at thus being baffled. The village church clock struck 1 as I entered my home in safety. I paid a second visit next morning at 4 to the wounded animal, but leaving my pocketbook at home this time, and going neither alone nor unarmed. The birds, however, had flown. If the ashes of the stick fire, and the bandages on the wounded horse had not borne me witness, I should have been inclined to fancy that hist night’s narrow escape was nothing more than a disturbing dream, a bad attack of nightmare; but tnese evidences were there, and it had been real. Two years afterward, I saw, in our weekly paper, that Dead Ned and two of his companions had been transported for manslaughter in a midnight scuffle.