The Last of the Gullivers Read Online Free

cases,” Maxine had told Ackerby.
    â€œThat’s right, Ms. Bellknap. It does.” The Magistrate was a man who liked routine and leeway bothered him.
    â€œIt isn’t my place to say, but I was thinking—well, of a deferment. A deferment of sentence. Make the boy work and repay the loss to Mr. Tiswas.”
    â€œHe’s too young,” Ackerby grunted. “What is he, ten?”
    â€œTwelve,” Maxine told him. “Young, but just old enough that a job might steer him away from bad influences.”
    â€œIt’d let him off very easy, too,” Ackerby moaned. “I can give him a harsher sentence than that.”
    â€œOf course you can. But I was thinking. Maybe it’s structure he needs. Something to give reason to his life. If he had a job. I was thinking, you could draft an agreement with the boy. A contract. He’d sign it and if he missed work or caused trouble—well, then,” said Maxine, making it up as she went.
    â€œThat isn’t a standard sentence,” Ackerby said.
    â€œNo,” Maxine admitted, “it isn’t. But you could give him penalty points for every infraction. Like a Driving License. And if he lost too many points . . . well, then.”
    â€œStraight to YOI,” the Magistrate said, chewing it over.
    Maxine nodded. “To YOI.”
    â€œM’hm. I would call it a Liberty License.”
    â€œWell, then.”
    That evening, as they headed back to the flat, rain fell in a cold wind and Freddie mumbled, “Isn’t fair. Have a life of my own. Now I got to take you to court every week.
Cruuuuud
.”
    At this same time, a short mile away, Chief Magistrate Horace Ackerby II took his usual table at the pub called
Folk-in-the-Clover
, by the fire, looking out on the windy and ghostless churchyard. He waited for Bertram, the wiry little cook, to bring him a meal of pig’s nose with parsley-and-onion sauce, sautéed red cabbage, two pints of ale. When the tower bell rang seven, the Chief Magistrate, whose own children were grown and whose wife had died, began to eat alone.
    He thought about the boy and wondered if the scheme would work. When Horace Ackerby had first seen Michael Pine, he’d seen himself as a child. They both had hair that wouldn’t comb, and something else: the light inside, the flickering spark. Maybe, the Magistrate thought, Michael wasn’t so far gone that a rescue couldn’t be made. Perhaps if they got to him soon enough, while the light still burned . . . Or was he wrong? Was he going too easy on the boy? There was a feeling in the country that all effort to reform young criminals had failed. Voices were rising and saying these thugs needed to learn that actions have consequences.
    Maxine had better be right, Horace thought. If something went wrong, if Michael Pine went wrong, this would come back to haunt him worse than any graveyard ghost. The voices would rise against him and he’d be out of a job.
That
would be the consequence of his action. And being Chief Magistrate meant a lot to Horace Ackerby.
    Words began to come to him and he spoke them, quietly, to himself . . .
    Â 
    THE ACKERBY LIBERTY LICENSE
    A FIRST CASE STUDY
    by H. Ackerby, JP
    Â 
    Michael Pine was a boy without dreams, a distrustful and uncurious lad who believed in nothing. He was drifting into crime, and worse lay ahead. Could I, Horace Ackerby II, Justice of the Peace, Chief Magistrate for Moss-on-Stone, change the course of this one young life?

CHAPTER FOUR
    THE EVER-SAME, NEVER-SAME SONG
    T hey knew something had happened, but didn’t know what. Their eyes were on him, wondering, all through the school day. The cut on his head was deep and should have been stitched, but Freddie said he’d have a scar and so what?
    Ms. Bellknap said nothing and continued their studies. The class learned more about birds, endangered, exotic, extinct, even a mythological bird. The