They Hanged My Saintly Billy Read Online Free Page B

addresses and other particulars, and she made good the money stolen. William confessed his guilt to Mr Evans, saying that he was properly penitent, and begged that he might remain until his apprenticeship ran out.
    Howsomever, they hardened their hearts, though it was a first offence; but to prevent the public scandal that would be caused if they cancelled the indentures, they consented to take on another young Palmer to finish William's apprenticeship. So they got Thomas, the same as is now a clergyman, in William's place; and Thomas, who had been a wild lad hitherto, conducted himself in a most exemplary way, because William begged him to restore the family reputation which he had tarnished.
    That should have been a lesson to William to have no more dealings with his Jane, especially as the lass had been put up to the lark by her mother, a woman of very bad character. Though passing as Simon Widnall's wife, she was no wife at all, and Jane was her illegitimate daughter by another man. This woman didn't allow William to get out of Jane's clutches, as I shall tell you, though she always kept in the background and acted silly.
    At the age of eighteen, William, who already had a good knowledge of drugs and their uses, was apprenticed for five years to Mr Edward Tylecote, the surgeon of Haywood, not far from here. His house stands opposite to that of William's sister—the elder sister who, I'm sorry to say, was the black sheep of the family and whose goings-on I should be ashamed to relate, because of the pain they have given Mrs Palmer. She died of drink soon afterwards. Mr Tylecote is a capable surgeon, but his practice being a poor and scattered one, he was glad to have William's assistance, especially as Mrs Palmer undertook to pay his bed and board and fifty guineas a year for instruction, if only Mr Tylccote, at the close of the apprenticeship, would get him admitted into the Staffordshire Infirmary as a walking pupil.
    William was doing pretty well at Haywood when, one day, he was startled to hear banns read in the church between James Vickerstaff, the assistant-gardener at Shoughborough Park, near by, and Jane Widnall. Howsomever, the bride proved not to be the red-haired lass, but her mother of the same name; and the union was in every way satisfactory, since Vickerstaff had been the lass's father, d'ye see? They say the mother's decision was made for two reasons. As to the first, Simon Widnall had turned her out of the house for receiving stolen goods; as to the second, she knew that William was apprenticed to Mr Tylecote, and young Jane had not lost hope of getting her fingers into the seven thousand pounds that William would enjoy when he came of age, and wanted to keep an eye on him.
    William was remarkably true to the girl; indeed, you may say that he was besotted by her. He didn't wish his family to know that he loved her still, and saw her daily; and therefore had to use deceit. I believe he felt remorse at having, as he thought, taken her maidenhead, and wanted to make her his wife, if she would but wait. Jane, who had pretended great surprise at finding him in the same village as herself, managed the affair pretty well: she kept him uncertain of her love, and admitted him to her favours rarely and in a grudging manner. When Mr Tylecote, tired with his morning's round and anxious for a rest after dinner, was settling for a nap, William would enter the dining-room and announce that a patient of his, over at Ingestre (as it might be), had requested a visit; at the same time offering to go. 'By all means,' Mr Tylecote would say, 'take the strawberry roan and the usual black draught!' William would mix a black draught, harness the roan, ride up village towards Ingestre, then circle about by the 'Abbey' and through a croft belonging to The Clifford Arms Hotel. He would enter the inn-yard by the back way, put up his nag, go off to Jane Widnall (who lived next door) and in due time empty the black draught on the midden