't have
thought you'd found everything as you left it. But what I vote is, as two of the
sensiblest o' the company should go with you to Master Kench, the constable's -
he's ill i' bed, I know that much - and get him to appoint one of us his
deppity; for that's the law, and I don't think anybody 'ull take upon him to
contradick me there. It isn't much of a walk to Kench's; and then, if it's me as
is deppity, I'll go back with you, Master Marner, and examine your primises; and
if anybody's got any fault to find with that, I'll thank him to stand up and say
it out like a man.«
    By this pregnant speech the farrier had re-established his self-complacency,
and waited with confidence to hear himself named as one of the superlatively
sensible men.
    »Let us see how the night is, though,« said the landlord, who also
considered himself personally concerned in this proposition. »Why, it rains
heavy still,« he said, returning from the door.
    »Well, I'm not the man to be afraid o' the rain,« said the farrier. »For
it'll look bad when Justice Malam hears as respectable men like us had a
information laid before 'em and took no steps.«
    The landlord agreed with this view, and after taking the sense of the
company, and duly rehearsing a small ceremony known in high ecclesiastical life
as the nolo episcopari, he consented to take on himself the chill dignity of
going to Kench's. But to the farrier's strong disgust, Mr. Macey now started an
objection to his proposing himself as a deputy-constable; for that oracular old
gentleman, claiming to know the law, stated, as a fact delivered to him by his
father, that no doctor could be a constable.
    »And you're a doctor, I reckon, though you're only a cow-doctor - for a
fly's a fly, though it may be a hoss-fly,« concluded Mr. Macey, wondering a
little at his own »'cuteness.«
    There was a hot debate upon this, the farrier being of course indisposed to
renounce the quality of doctor, but contending that a doctor could be a
constable if he liked - the law meant, he needn't be one if he didn't like. Mr.
