They Hanged My Saintly Billy Read Online Free

from the counting-house, with one Widnall. He could not be put up by his brother Joseph, because at that time Joseph was working a colliery at Cannock Chase, not many miles from here—a business, let me tell you, which lost him a few thousand pounds. William had hitherto lived an innocent life, and was still what they call a he-virgin when the landlord's red-headed daughter Jane, who was William's senior by two years, decoyed him into her bed. She thought William a pretty good catch, having heard that he possessed seven thousand pounds of his own, and was determined to lay her hands on it. After a few weeks had passed she pretended to be with child and, coming to him with eyes red from weeping, begged that he would marry her.
    When he protested that this was out of the question, much as he loved her and regretted her plight, she demanded fifty pounds for the performance of an abortion. William replied that he had not above five pounds in his pockets, and would not enjoy his inheritance until the age of twenty-one.
    'Very well’ said she, 'if I cannot turn away the brat you have given me, then I must needs bear it; and my father will make you either marry or support me.'
    William stood at a loss. 'I am a respectable girl,' she went on, 'and you have seduced me.'
    'But where am I to find the fifty pounds ?' asks William. 'That's a deal of money,' he says.
    'You have a rich brother,' answers the red-haired lass. 'Borrow from him.'
    'Joseph is the last man in the world I can approach,' says William. ' 'Tis like this. My father, in the year of the Queen's Coronation, comes home to dinner one day, eats and drinks with gusto, but falls dead of heart-failure with his bread and cheese still clutched in his hand. The will he left behind was unsigned; and Joseph, as the eldest son, might by law have taken all the property in his own right, bar the widow's thirds. However, he was kind enough to execute a deed by which he should keep only seven thousand pounds, and we others should have the same sum apiece; and my mother, the remainder and the landed property, for her lifetime—on condition that she would not re-marry. And there's a clause in the deed, my dear, which debars any of us from enjoying our inheritance if we marry before the age of twenty-one, or commit any grave fault. Joseph is a good-hearted man, but he's also a severe one, and I don't propose to vex him.'
    'Why did you hide all this from me?' cried Jane Widnall in a rage. 'I'd never have let you so much as kiss me, if I'd known how matters stood!'
    ' You never asked me,' says William.
    Presently the lass goes off to an abortionist, or pretends to; then she comes back and takes to her bed for a few days. She tells William that all's well, but that he must find two hundred pounds within six weeks, because she's stolen that sum from her father's strong-box, and there'll be the Devil to pay if it's not put back before he makes up his quarterly accounts. 'I shall accuse you of the theft,' she threatens William.
    'Why did you pay two hundred pounds, and not fifty?' he asks, in surprise.
    'I couldn't find the ready money,' she explains, and says: 'The wretch has threatened to inform my father, and I'll be ruined.'
    William is a greenhorn, and suspects nothing. He should have known that no abortionist would perform an operation except for cash on the nail, or afterwards run the risk of going to gaol for the crime of abortion and the equally serious crime of extorting money by threats. Then, on the advice of a fellow-apprentice, he backs a certainty at the Liverpool Races. It loses him five pounds. So he sells his gold watch, given him as a present by old Mrs Palmer when he left home, and with the five pounds it fetches, backs a certainty at the Shrewsbury Races. He loses again, and in despair resorts to other means of money raising.
    Messrs Evans & Sons are troubled. Various customers write to say that they have paid their accounts owing to the firm, but have received no