Chapter Twenty.

Chapter Twenty.The Royal Hotel.“O haste to aid, ere aid be vain.”Scott.Though Johnnie’s journey was over, his troubles were not at an end. When he came to the first houses, the way seemed still to lengthen out before him, and everything appeared to be still asleep, though the daylight was coming in as brightly as a foggy morning allowed. Nor did he know his way; he had only driven to a timber-yard once with his cousin, and dined with him at a little public-house close by, and had no more than a dim recollection of shops, which looked quite different now, with all their shutters up. Only a milk-cart, coming in with full tins, seemed to give a sign that people would want their breakfast some time or other; and next appeared a very black sweep with his cart, and two miserable little bare-footed boys running beside it, as black as the silhouette over Mrs Thorpe’s chimney.Half-past five struck, and charwomen began to come out of side alleys, baker’s shops to take down their shutters. Johnnie ventured to ask one of the apprentice boys doing so the way to the Royal George Hotel.“D’ye want to bespeak the best apartments?” was all the answer he got, as the lad stopped his whistling and looked superciliously at Johnnie’s battered, dusty working dress, and old straw hat.He found he should only be laughed at and walked on, renewing his question when he saw a good-natured-looking woman in a black bonnet and stout canvas apron, apparently going out for a day’s washing.“Is it the Royal or the King George Tavern as you mean, my son?” she asked him.“Oh! the Royal—the one where the gentlemen goes,” said Johnnie. “I’ve got a message for one of ’em.”“Bless you, my lad, they won’t never let you in at this time of morning,” said the woman.“It’s very particular,” returned John. “I came off at night to tell him.”She looked at him curiously. “And what might it be, young man! Some one taken very bad, no doubt.”“No—not that,” said John, and she looked so kind, he could not help telling. “But he have got a machine, and Jack Swing is coming, and if he don’t come home to see to the poor ladies—”“Bless me, and who may it be?”“Captain Carbonel—out at Uphill.”“Never heard tell of the place.”“It’s out beyond Poppleby.”“My! And you’ve comed all that way to-night?”“The ladies are very good. He’s a right good gentleman. All one to the poor as to the rich.”“I say! You are a good young man, to be sure! I’d go with you and get to the speech of Lavinia Bull, the chambermaid, what I know right well; but if I’m not at Mrs Hurd’s by six o’clock, she’ll be flying at me like a wild cat. Mercy on me, there it goes six! Well, if that fine dandy, Boots, as is puffed up like a peacock, won’t heed you, ask for Lavinia Bull, and say Mrs Callendar sent you, and he will call her fast enough.”John thanked her and was going off at once, but she called out, “Bless the boy, he’s off without even hearing where to go! Just opposite the City Cross, as they calls it.”It was not much like a cross to Johnnie’s mind, being a sort of tower, all arches and pinnacles and mouldered statues, getting smaller up to the spiring top; but he knew it, and saw the hotel opposite with all its blinds down, nothing like astir yet, except that some one was about under the great open doorway leading into a yard, half entrance, to the hotel.He could see a man brushing a shoe, and went up with “Please, sir—” But he was met by, “Get off you young vagabond, we want none of your sort here.”“Please, sir, I have a message for Miss Bull;” he hesitated.“She ain’t down. Get off, I say. We don’t have no idle lads here.”“It’s very particular—from Mrs Callendar.”“Old witch! Have she been burning any one’s shirt fronts. I say, Jem, you see if Lavinia is in the kitchen, and tell her old Callendar has been burning holes in her stockings or collars, and has sent a young scarecrow to tell her.”John opened his mouth to say it was no such thing; but the under shoeblack, who was a sort of slave to Boots, made an ugly face at him, and was gone, turning coach wheels across the yard. In another minute Lavinia, a nice brisk looking young woman, had come up with, “Well, young man, what has Mrs Callendar been after now?”“Please, ma’am, nothing; but she said as how I was to ask for you. It’s for Captain Carbonel, ma’am, a message from Uphill—that’s his home.”“Captain Carbonel—that’s Number Seven,” she said, consulting a slate that hung near the bar. “He was to be called at eight o’clock. Won’t that do?”“Oh no, no, ma’am,” implored John, thinking that the captain was taking his rest away from home. “It’s very particular, and I have come all night with it.”“You have got to call Number Five for the High Flier at half-past six,” she said, turning to Boots. “Could not you take up word at the same time?”“Catch me running errands for a jackanapes like that,” said Boots, with a contemptuous shrug, turning away, and brushing at his shoe.“Never mind him,” said good-natured Lavinia. “What shall I say, young man?”“Oh, thank you, miss. Say that John Hewlett have brought him a message from Uphill.”“Jack Owlet! Oh my! Hoo! hoo!” exclaimed the blacking boy, as soon as Lavinia had disappeared up the stairs, dancing about with his hands on his hips. “Look here, Tom,”—to a boy with a pail, who had just come in—“here be an Owlet’s just flown in out of the mud. Hoo! hoo! Where did you get that ’ere patch on your back.”“Where you never got none,” responded the other boy. “Mother stitched it for him.”“Ay, sitting under a hedge, with her pot hung up on three sticks and a hedgepig in it,” added the younger Boots. “Come, own up, young gipsy! Yer come to get a tanner out of Number Seven with your tales.”“I’m no gipsy,” growled John; “but—”“Come, come,” called out Boots, “none of your row. And you, you impudent tramp, don’t ye be larking about here, making the lads idle. Get out of the yard with ye, or I call the master to you.”The landlord might probably have been far more civil; but poor Johnnie did not know this, and could only move off to the entrance of the court, so that when Lavinia in another moment appeared and asked where he was, Boots answered—“How should I tell? He was up to mischief with the boys, and I bade him be off.”“Well, Number Seven is ever so much put about, and he said he would be down in a jiffy! So there!”Lavinia held up her skirts, and began in her white stockings to pick her way across the yard, while Boots sneered, and began brushing his shoe, and whistling as if quite undisturbed; and in another moment Captain Carbonel did appear, coming down the stairs very fast, all unshaven, and with a few clothes hastily thrown on, and quite ran after Lavinia, passing her as she pointed out beyond the entrance, where John was disconsolately leaning against the wall with his hands in his pockets, feeling how utterly weary and hungry he was, and with uneasy thoughts about his father coming over him.“Oh, there you are, John Hewlett! What is it? No one ill?” exclaimed the captain.“No, sir; but,”—coming nearer and lowering his voice—“Jack Swing, sir.”“Jack Swing! We had notice of him out at Delafield.”John shook his head, and looked down.“What! Do you know anything, my boy? Here, come in—tell me!”“Please, sir, they’ve laid it out to come to Greenhow this very day as is, to break the machine and get the guns and money.”The captain started, as well he might; but still demanded, “How do you know?”John held his head down, most unwilling to answer.“Look here, my lad, you’ve done well coming to warn me; but I must be certain of your news before acting on it. We were to ride off to Delafield to-day, and I must know if this is only a rumour.”“Aunt heard them,” said John, between his teeth. “She heard them planning it for to-morrow—that’s to-day—and she laid it on me to let you know to save the ladies from being fraught.”“Your aunt heard it?”“Through the window in the back garden. They planned to get all the chaps at Downhill and all, and go at the machine.”“The villains! Who did? No, I’ll not ask that, my lad,” said the captain, knowing only too well who it must have been; “you have acted nobly, and I am for ever obliged to you. Come in, and have some breakfast, while I dress and report this, and see what is to be done. You are sure there is time?”“They was to go about at dinner-time to get the folks,” John squeezed out of his mouth, much against his will.“Then there’s time. Thank you with all my heart, John! I’ll see you again. Here,”—to a barmaid who had appeared on the scene—“give this young man a hearty good breakfast and a cup of ale—will you?—and I’ll be down again presently. Stay till I come, Hewlett, and I’ll see you again, and how you are to get home! Why, it is twenty miles! Were you walking all night?”“Only I went to sleep a bit of the time when I was trying to make out the milestone; I don’t rightly know how long it was,” said John, so much ashamed of his nap that the captain laughed, and said—“Never mind, Johnnie, you are here in the very nick of time; eat your breakfast, and I’ll see you again.”The good-natured barmaid let John have a wash at the pump with a bit of yellow soap and the round towel, and he was able to eat his breakfast with a will—a corner of cold pie and a glass of strong ale, such a breakfast as he had never seen, though it was only the leavings of yesterday’s luncheon. Everybody was too busy just then to pay him any attention, and he had time to hear all the noises and bells seem to run into one dull sound, and to be nodding in his chair before he was called by a waiter, with—“Ha, youngster, there, look alive! the gentlemen wants you.”Now that sleep had once begun upon him, assisted by the ale, John looked some degrees less alive, though far more respectable than on his first arrival. He was ushered into the coffee-room, where three or four gentlemen sat at one table, all in blue and silver, with the captain, and as he pulled his forelock and bobbed his head, the elder of them—a dignified looking man with grey hair and whiskers and a silver-laced uniform, said—“So, my lad, you are come to warn Captain Carbonel of an intended attack on his property?”“Yes, sir,” John mumbled, looking more and more of a lout, for he had thought the captain would just go home alone to defend his wife and his machine, and was dismayed at finding the matter taken up in this way, dreading lest he should have brought every one into trouble and be viewed as an informer.“What evidence have you of such intentions?”John looked into his hat and shuffled on his foot, and Captain Carbonel, who knew that Sir Harry Hartman, the old gentleman, was persuaded that Delafield was the place to protect, was in an agony lest John should be too awkward and too anxious to shield his family to convince him. He ventured to translate the words into “How do you know?”His voice somehow made John feel that he must speak, and he said, “Aunt heard it.”“What’s that? Who is aunt?” said Sir Harry, in a tone as if deciding that it was gossip; but this put John rather more on his mettle, and he said, “My aunt, Judith Grey, sir.”“How did she hear?”“Through the window. She heard them laying it out.”“She is bedridden,” put in the captain; “but a clever, sensible woman.”“Whom did she hear or see?”“She couldn’t see nobody, sir. It was a strange voice,” John was trying to save the truth.“Oh! and what did she hear?”“They was planning to go round the place and call up the men—that’s to-day,” said John.“Are you sure it was to-day? Did she tell you she heard it?”“Yes, sir. And,” John bethought him, “there was a great row going on at the ‘Fox and Hounds,’ and when I came past Poppleby, a whole lot of them come out singing ‘Down with the machines.’”“That’s more like it, if it was not a mere drunken uproar,” said Sir Harry.“I suppose you did not know any of the voices?” said one of the other gentlemen.John could hold his tongue this time. “And you came all this way by night, twenty miles and odd, to warn Captain Carbonel, on your aunt’s information?” said Sir Harry, thoughtfully. “Are you sure that she could hear distinctly?”“One can hear in her room talk in our garden as well as if it was in the room,” replied John.“Well! you are a good lad, well intentioned,” said Sir Harry. “Here’s half-a-crown to pay your journey back. We will consider what is to be done.”John had rather not have taken the half-crown, but he did not know how to say so, so he pulled his forelock and accepted it.Captain Carbonel came out of the coffee-room with him, and called to the hostler to let him lie down and rest for a couple of hours, when the Red Rover would change horses there, and then call him, and pay for his journey back to Poppleby.So John lay down on clean straw and slept, too much tired out to put thoughts together, and unaware of the discussion among the gentlemen. For Sir Harry Hartman was persuaded that it was Delafield that needed protection, and was inclined to make little of John Hewlett’s warning, thinking that it rested on the authority of a sick nervous woman, and that there was no distinct evidence but that of the young man who would not speak out, and only went by hearsay.Captain Carbonel, who was, of course, in an agony to get home and defend his property, but was firmly bound by his notions of discipline, argued that the lad was the son of the most disaffected man in the parish, and that his silence was testimony to the likelihood that his father was consulting with the ringleader. The invalid woman he knew to be sensible and prudent, and most unlikely either to mistake what she heard, or to send her nephew on such a night journey without urgent cause, and he asked permission to go himself, if the troop were wanted elsewhere, to defend his home. Finally, just as the debate was warming between the officers, a farmer came in from Delafield, and assured them that all was quiet there. So the horses were brought out, and there was much jingling of equipments, and Johnnie awoke with a start of dismay. He had never thought of such doings. He had only thought of Captain Carbonel’s riding home, never of bringing down what seemed to him a whole army on his father.

“O haste to aid, ere aid be vain.”Scott.

“O haste to aid, ere aid be vain.”Scott.

Though Johnnie’s journey was over, his troubles were not at an end. When he came to the first houses, the way seemed still to lengthen out before him, and everything appeared to be still asleep, though the daylight was coming in as brightly as a foggy morning allowed. Nor did he know his way; he had only driven to a timber-yard once with his cousin, and dined with him at a little public-house close by, and had no more than a dim recollection of shops, which looked quite different now, with all their shutters up. Only a milk-cart, coming in with full tins, seemed to give a sign that people would want their breakfast some time or other; and next appeared a very black sweep with his cart, and two miserable little bare-footed boys running beside it, as black as the silhouette over Mrs Thorpe’s chimney.

Half-past five struck, and charwomen began to come out of side alleys, baker’s shops to take down their shutters. Johnnie ventured to ask one of the apprentice boys doing so the way to the Royal George Hotel.

“D’ye want to bespeak the best apartments?” was all the answer he got, as the lad stopped his whistling and looked superciliously at Johnnie’s battered, dusty working dress, and old straw hat.

He found he should only be laughed at and walked on, renewing his question when he saw a good-natured-looking woman in a black bonnet and stout canvas apron, apparently going out for a day’s washing.

“Is it the Royal or the King George Tavern as you mean, my son?” she asked him.

“Oh! the Royal—the one where the gentlemen goes,” said Johnnie. “I’ve got a message for one of ’em.”

“Bless you, my lad, they won’t never let you in at this time of morning,” said the woman.

“It’s very particular,” returned John. “I came off at night to tell him.”

She looked at him curiously. “And what might it be, young man! Some one taken very bad, no doubt.”

“No—not that,” said John, and she looked so kind, he could not help telling. “But he have got a machine, and Jack Swing is coming, and if he don’t come home to see to the poor ladies—”

“Bless me, and who may it be?”

“Captain Carbonel—out at Uphill.”

“Never heard tell of the place.”

“It’s out beyond Poppleby.”

“My! And you’ve comed all that way to-night?”

“The ladies are very good. He’s a right good gentleman. All one to the poor as to the rich.”

“I say! You are a good young man, to be sure! I’d go with you and get to the speech of Lavinia Bull, the chambermaid, what I know right well; but if I’m not at Mrs Hurd’s by six o’clock, she’ll be flying at me like a wild cat. Mercy on me, there it goes six! Well, if that fine dandy, Boots, as is puffed up like a peacock, won’t heed you, ask for Lavinia Bull, and say Mrs Callendar sent you, and he will call her fast enough.”

John thanked her and was going off at once, but she called out, “Bless the boy, he’s off without even hearing where to go! Just opposite the City Cross, as they calls it.”

It was not much like a cross to Johnnie’s mind, being a sort of tower, all arches and pinnacles and mouldered statues, getting smaller up to the spiring top; but he knew it, and saw the hotel opposite with all its blinds down, nothing like astir yet, except that some one was about under the great open doorway leading into a yard, half entrance, to the hotel.

He could see a man brushing a shoe, and went up with “Please, sir—” But he was met by, “Get off you young vagabond, we want none of your sort here.”

“Please, sir, I have a message for Miss Bull;” he hesitated.

“She ain’t down. Get off, I say. We don’t have no idle lads here.”

“It’s very particular—from Mrs Callendar.”

“Old witch! Have she been burning any one’s shirt fronts. I say, Jem, you see if Lavinia is in the kitchen, and tell her old Callendar has been burning holes in her stockings or collars, and has sent a young scarecrow to tell her.”

John opened his mouth to say it was no such thing; but the under shoeblack, who was a sort of slave to Boots, made an ugly face at him, and was gone, turning coach wheels across the yard. In another minute Lavinia, a nice brisk looking young woman, had come up with, “Well, young man, what has Mrs Callendar been after now?”

“Please, ma’am, nothing; but she said as how I was to ask for you. It’s for Captain Carbonel, ma’am, a message from Uphill—that’s his home.”

“Captain Carbonel—that’s Number Seven,” she said, consulting a slate that hung near the bar. “He was to be called at eight o’clock. Won’t that do?”

“Oh no, no, ma’am,” implored John, thinking that the captain was taking his rest away from home. “It’s very particular, and I have come all night with it.”

“You have got to call Number Five for the High Flier at half-past six,” she said, turning to Boots. “Could not you take up word at the same time?”

“Catch me running errands for a jackanapes like that,” said Boots, with a contemptuous shrug, turning away, and brushing at his shoe.

“Never mind him,” said good-natured Lavinia. “What shall I say, young man?”

“Oh, thank you, miss. Say that John Hewlett have brought him a message from Uphill.”

“Jack Owlet! Oh my! Hoo! hoo!” exclaimed the blacking boy, as soon as Lavinia had disappeared up the stairs, dancing about with his hands on his hips. “Look here, Tom,”—to a boy with a pail, who had just come in—“here be an Owlet’s just flown in out of the mud. Hoo! hoo! Where did you get that ’ere patch on your back.”

“Where you never got none,” responded the other boy. “Mother stitched it for him.”

“Ay, sitting under a hedge, with her pot hung up on three sticks and a hedgepig in it,” added the younger Boots. “Come, own up, young gipsy! Yer come to get a tanner out of Number Seven with your tales.”

“I’m no gipsy,” growled John; “but—”

“Come, come,” called out Boots, “none of your row. And you, you impudent tramp, don’t ye be larking about here, making the lads idle. Get out of the yard with ye, or I call the master to you.”

The landlord might probably have been far more civil; but poor Johnnie did not know this, and could only move off to the entrance of the court, so that when Lavinia in another moment appeared and asked where he was, Boots answered—

“How should I tell? He was up to mischief with the boys, and I bade him be off.”

“Well, Number Seven is ever so much put about, and he said he would be down in a jiffy! So there!”

Lavinia held up her skirts, and began in her white stockings to pick her way across the yard, while Boots sneered, and began brushing his shoe, and whistling as if quite undisturbed; and in another moment Captain Carbonel did appear, coming down the stairs very fast, all unshaven, and with a few clothes hastily thrown on, and quite ran after Lavinia, passing her as she pointed out beyond the entrance, where John was disconsolately leaning against the wall with his hands in his pockets, feeling how utterly weary and hungry he was, and with uneasy thoughts about his father coming over him.

“Oh, there you are, John Hewlett! What is it? No one ill?” exclaimed the captain.

“No, sir; but,”—coming nearer and lowering his voice—“Jack Swing, sir.”

“Jack Swing! We had notice of him out at Delafield.”

John shook his head, and looked down.

“What! Do you know anything, my boy? Here, come in—tell me!”

“Please, sir, they’ve laid it out to come to Greenhow this very day as is, to break the machine and get the guns and money.”

The captain started, as well he might; but still demanded, “How do you know?”

John held his head down, most unwilling to answer.

“Look here, my lad, you’ve done well coming to warn me; but I must be certain of your news before acting on it. We were to ride off to Delafield to-day, and I must know if this is only a rumour.”

“Aunt heard them,” said John, between his teeth. “She heard them planning it for to-morrow—that’s to-day—and she laid it on me to let you know to save the ladies from being fraught.”

“Your aunt heard it?”

“Through the window in the back garden. They planned to get all the chaps at Downhill and all, and go at the machine.”

“The villains! Who did? No, I’ll not ask that, my lad,” said the captain, knowing only too well who it must have been; “you have acted nobly, and I am for ever obliged to you. Come in, and have some breakfast, while I dress and report this, and see what is to be done. You are sure there is time?”

“They was to go about at dinner-time to get the folks,” John squeezed out of his mouth, much against his will.

“Then there’s time. Thank you with all my heart, John! I’ll see you again. Here,”—to a barmaid who had appeared on the scene—“give this young man a hearty good breakfast and a cup of ale—will you?—and I’ll be down again presently. Stay till I come, Hewlett, and I’ll see you again, and how you are to get home! Why, it is twenty miles! Were you walking all night?”

“Only I went to sleep a bit of the time when I was trying to make out the milestone; I don’t rightly know how long it was,” said John, so much ashamed of his nap that the captain laughed, and said—

“Never mind, Johnnie, you are here in the very nick of time; eat your breakfast, and I’ll see you again.”

The good-natured barmaid let John have a wash at the pump with a bit of yellow soap and the round towel, and he was able to eat his breakfast with a will—a corner of cold pie and a glass of strong ale, such a breakfast as he had never seen, though it was only the leavings of yesterday’s luncheon. Everybody was too busy just then to pay him any attention, and he had time to hear all the noises and bells seem to run into one dull sound, and to be nodding in his chair before he was called by a waiter, with—“Ha, youngster, there, look alive! the gentlemen wants you.”

Now that sleep had once begun upon him, assisted by the ale, John looked some degrees less alive, though far more respectable than on his first arrival. He was ushered into the coffee-room, where three or four gentlemen sat at one table, all in blue and silver, with the captain, and as he pulled his forelock and bobbed his head, the elder of them—a dignified looking man with grey hair and whiskers and a silver-laced uniform, said—“So, my lad, you are come to warn Captain Carbonel of an intended attack on his property?”

“Yes, sir,” John mumbled, looking more and more of a lout, for he had thought the captain would just go home alone to defend his wife and his machine, and was dismayed at finding the matter taken up in this way, dreading lest he should have brought every one into trouble and be viewed as an informer.

“What evidence have you of such intentions?”

John looked into his hat and shuffled on his foot, and Captain Carbonel, who knew that Sir Harry Hartman, the old gentleman, was persuaded that Delafield was the place to protect, was in an agony lest John should be too awkward and too anxious to shield his family to convince him. He ventured to translate the words into “How do you know?”

His voice somehow made John feel that he must speak, and he said, “Aunt heard it.”

“What’s that? Who is aunt?” said Sir Harry, in a tone as if deciding that it was gossip; but this put John rather more on his mettle, and he said, “My aunt, Judith Grey, sir.”

“How did she hear?”

“Through the window. She heard them laying it out.”

“She is bedridden,” put in the captain; “but a clever, sensible woman.”

“Whom did she hear or see?”

“She couldn’t see nobody, sir. It was a strange voice,” John was trying to save the truth.

“Oh! and what did she hear?”

“They was planning to go round the place and call up the men—that’s to-day,” said John.

“Are you sure it was to-day? Did she tell you she heard it?”

“Yes, sir. And,” John bethought him, “there was a great row going on at the ‘Fox and Hounds,’ and when I came past Poppleby, a whole lot of them come out singing ‘Down with the machines.’”

“That’s more like it, if it was not a mere drunken uproar,” said Sir Harry.

“I suppose you did not know any of the voices?” said one of the other gentlemen.

John could hold his tongue this time. “And you came all this way by night, twenty miles and odd, to warn Captain Carbonel, on your aunt’s information?” said Sir Harry, thoughtfully. “Are you sure that she could hear distinctly?”

“One can hear in her room talk in our garden as well as if it was in the room,” replied John.

“Well! you are a good lad, well intentioned,” said Sir Harry. “Here’s half-a-crown to pay your journey back. We will consider what is to be done.”

John had rather not have taken the half-crown, but he did not know how to say so, so he pulled his forelock and accepted it.

Captain Carbonel came out of the coffee-room with him, and called to the hostler to let him lie down and rest for a couple of hours, when the Red Rover would change horses there, and then call him, and pay for his journey back to Poppleby.

So John lay down on clean straw and slept, too much tired out to put thoughts together, and unaware of the discussion among the gentlemen. For Sir Harry Hartman was persuaded that it was Delafield that needed protection, and was inclined to make little of John Hewlett’s warning, thinking that it rested on the authority of a sick nervous woman, and that there was no distinct evidence but that of the young man who would not speak out, and only went by hearsay.

Captain Carbonel, who was, of course, in an agony to get home and defend his property, but was firmly bound by his notions of discipline, argued that the lad was the son of the most disaffected man in the parish, and that his silence was testimony to the likelihood that his father was consulting with the ringleader. The invalid woman he knew to be sensible and prudent, and most unlikely either to mistake what she heard, or to send her nephew on such a night journey without urgent cause, and he asked permission to go himself, if the troop were wanted elsewhere, to defend his home. Finally, just as the debate was warming between the officers, a farmer came in from Delafield, and assured them that all was quiet there. So the horses were brought out, and there was much jingling of equipments, and Johnnie awoke with a start of dismay. He had never thought of such doings. He had only thought of Captain Carbonel’s riding home, never of bringing down what seemed to him a whole army on his father.

Chapter Twenty One.Jack Swing.“Richard of England, thou hast slain Jack Straw,But thou hast left unquenched the vital sparkThat set Jack Straw on fire.”Sir H. Taylor.Nobody knew who Jack Swing was. Most likely he really was more than one person, or rather an impersonal being, worked up as a sort of shadowy puppet to act in the cause of future reform.There were hot spirits abroad, who knew that much was amiss on many points, and who burned to set them right; and there were others who were simply envious and jealous of all that had power or authority, and wanted to put these down for their own profit. They thought that the way to get their cause attended to was to make the other party afraid of the people, and they did not know or understand that those who delayed to grant their wishes only desired patience, and to do the work in the best and wisest way. All that they demanded, and more too, has since been given to the people, but gradually, as was expedient, and without tumult or disturbance.So there was a desire to frighten the gentry by showing the strength of the people, in anticipation of the Reform Bill to be proposed the next year. It would not have made much difference to the country people, for no one would have a vote whose rent did not amount to ten pounds a year, and they would not have cared much about it if they had not been told that if it was passed, every man would have a fat pig in his sty, and be able to drink his daily quart of beer, moreover, that the noblemen and gentlemen were resolved on keeping them out of their rights, making bread dear, and depriving them of their wages by setting up machines to do all the work.This last came near home, and stirred up the minds that would have cared for little else. Just as four hundred years before, Jack Straw was an imaginary champion whose name inflamed the people to rise, so now Jack Swing, or whoever it was who acted in that name, sent messages round that such and such a place should be attacked at such and such a time.There was always some one in the town who could be fired with the idea that inciting riot and revolt was patriotism, and that a good cause could be served by evil methods, who cast aside such warnings as “Rebellion is like the sin of witchcraft,” or “The powers that be are ordained of God.” Besides, the infection spread, and to hear what Jack Swing was doing elsewhere encouraged others not to be behindhand with their neighbours.So the mandate had gone out, and there were a few at Elchester ready to arrange for a rising at Uphill and Downhill. Dan Hewlett was known to them in the public-house, and he had an especial spite at Captain Carbonel, beginning from his knowledge of the tacit detection of his abstraction of the paper at Greenhow, going through his dismissal from working there, aggravated by the endeavour to remove Judith, embittered by the convictions as a poacher, and, perhaps, brought to a height by the influence over his eldest son. He hated the captain enough to be willing to direct the attack upon Greenhow, especially as it was known that the master was absent and engaged in summoning the yeomanry “to ride down the poor chaps,” as it was said, “who only wanted bread for their children’s mouths.”There were men both at Uphill and Downhill, and even at Poppleby, who were quite willing to listen. The Poppleby folk, some of them, believed that riot was the only way to get reform, more of the villagers thought it was the only way of getting rid of the machines, the object of mysterious dread for the future, and more still, chiefly ne’er-do-wells and great idle lads, were ready for any mischief that might be going; and full of curiosity and delight at what Jack Swing might be about to do.These youths, some of them at work and some not, dispersed the news through the village and fields that there was to be a great rising of the people’s friends, and that Gobbleall’s machine was to besomewhere. All were to meet at the randygo—supposed to mean rendezvous—at the cross-road, and as for those who did not, it would be the worse for them, and worse than all for them that told clacking women who might carry the tale up to Greenhow.The summons was indeed not given till the men were well out of reach of their clacking women, but at work in the fields, and then a party began—not to march—they could not have done that to save their lives, but to tramp out of Poppleby, shouting to any one whom they saw in the fields to come with them and stand up for the people’s rights. At Downhill their numbers increased by all the noisy fellows, and some who fancied great good was to be gained somehow, though some wiser wives called out to them not to get into a row, nor let themselves be drawn into what they would be sorry for. At the “Fox and Hounds” they tarried and demanded a glass of beer all round, which Mr Oldfellow was really afraid to refuse. He was a timid man, half on their side, half on that of the gentry, and he saw there were enough of them to sack his cellars if he demurred.There, too, amid much laughter, they all disguised themselves, some blackening their faces with soot, others whitening them with chalk, and some putting on the women’s cloaks, bonnets, or aprons.Then they collected Uphill men.“We are come for your good,” said Jack Swing, or the man who passed for him, wearing a long Punch-like nose. “We are come to help you; and where’s the mean coward that won’t come along with us in his own cause? There will be no living for poor folks if those new-fangled machines be allowed to go on, and them Parliament folk vote out all that makes for the people. Down with them, I say! Up with Reform, and down with all the fools and cowards who won’t stand up for themselves.”All this, garnished with foul words and abuse, and roared out from the top of the horse-block, was addressed to the crowd that began to gather.Dan Hewlett, with a horrid white face, was going about persuading the men, and so were others. “Bless you, we don’t want to do no harm to the ladies, nor the children. We only wants to do away with them toady machines, as they wants to do all the work instead of men’s hands, as the Almighty meant, and is in Scripture.”This was the plea to the better disposed, like Tom Seddon, who held out, “You’ll not hurt madam nor the little ones. She’ve been a kind lady, and the captain, he’s a good master, I will say that; and I don’t want to hurt ’em.”“Nobody wants to hurt them; only to do away with they machines.”“I tell you what,” was George Truman’s answer, “them machines are the captain’s, none of yours nor mine, and I won’t go for to damage ’em. No! I won’t have my face blacked nor whited, I’m an honest man, and not ashamed to show it. So I be going to my work.”And off he went to his day’s work at Farmer Goodenough’s, and the others hissed him and hooted him, but did him no harm. Nobody made such a noise as Softy Sam, and together this frightened Jem Gibbs out of following him, though he much wished to do so. Will Mole, as soon as he heard any sounds, ran away headlong down towards the meadows, and hid himself in the long rushes. Cox, the constable, thought discretion the better part of valour; and long before the rabble rout appeared, set off to carry a pair of shoes home to Mrs Pearson at the Lone Farm.Master Hewlett, the carpenter, looked in vain for John, his apprentice, and growled and grumbled that he did not appear; then, on perceiving the uproar, decided that he was gone after that “there father of his’n.” He wouldn’t have thought it of Jack. No; he wouldn’t; but sure enough it was “bred in the bone of him!” Master Hewlett went on with his planing; and when the troop, now amounting to about thirty grown men, besides a huge rabble of boys and girls, came along, and Dan shouted to him to come and stand up for the rights of the people, and down with that there “tyrum Gobbleall” and his machine to grind down the poor, he answered—“Machine ain’t nothing to me. I minds my own business, and thou beest a fool, Dan, not to mind thine! And where’s that lad of thine? A trapesing after mischief, just like all idle fellows?”“He bain’t a labourer, and has no feeling for them as is,” said Dan. “We wants your axe, though, George.”“Not he! I dares you to touch him,” said George Hewlett in his unmoved way, smoothing off a long curled shaving, which fell on the ground. “There, that’s the worth of you all and your Jack Swing! Swing, ye will, Dan, if you don’t take the better care.”Some one made a move as if to seize the axe, but George made one step, and lifted quietly the stout bit of timber he had been planing, and it was plain that a whole armoury of carpenter’s tools was on his side the bench.“Come along,” said Dan, “he’s a coward and mean-spirited cur. Us shan’t do nothing with he.”So on they went, all the kindnesses and benefits from Greenhow forgotten, and nothing remembered at the moment but grievances, mostly past, but more looked forward to as possible!The women did remember. Judith Grey was in an agony, praying as she lay for Mrs Carbonel and the children. Widow Mole knew nothing, but was weeding the paths at Greenhow; Betsy Seddon and Molly Barnes were crying piteously “at thought of madam and her little girl as might be fraught to death by them there rascals.” But no one knew what to do! Some stayed at home, in fear for their husbands, but a good many followed in the wake of the men, to see what would happen, and to come in for a little excitement—whether it were fright, pity, or indignation.“’Pon my word and honour,” said Lizzy Morris, “that there will be summat to talk on.”

“Richard of England, thou hast slain Jack Straw,But thou hast left unquenched the vital sparkThat set Jack Straw on fire.”Sir H. Taylor.

“Richard of England, thou hast slain Jack Straw,But thou hast left unquenched the vital sparkThat set Jack Straw on fire.”Sir H. Taylor.

Nobody knew who Jack Swing was. Most likely he really was more than one person, or rather an impersonal being, worked up as a sort of shadowy puppet to act in the cause of future reform.

There were hot spirits abroad, who knew that much was amiss on many points, and who burned to set them right; and there were others who were simply envious and jealous of all that had power or authority, and wanted to put these down for their own profit. They thought that the way to get their cause attended to was to make the other party afraid of the people, and they did not know or understand that those who delayed to grant their wishes only desired patience, and to do the work in the best and wisest way. All that they demanded, and more too, has since been given to the people, but gradually, as was expedient, and without tumult or disturbance.

So there was a desire to frighten the gentry by showing the strength of the people, in anticipation of the Reform Bill to be proposed the next year. It would not have made much difference to the country people, for no one would have a vote whose rent did not amount to ten pounds a year, and they would not have cared much about it if they had not been told that if it was passed, every man would have a fat pig in his sty, and be able to drink his daily quart of beer, moreover, that the noblemen and gentlemen were resolved on keeping them out of their rights, making bread dear, and depriving them of their wages by setting up machines to do all the work.

This last came near home, and stirred up the minds that would have cared for little else. Just as four hundred years before, Jack Straw was an imaginary champion whose name inflamed the people to rise, so now Jack Swing, or whoever it was who acted in that name, sent messages round that such and such a place should be attacked at such and such a time.

There was always some one in the town who could be fired with the idea that inciting riot and revolt was patriotism, and that a good cause could be served by evil methods, who cast aside such warnings as “Rebellion is like the sin of witchcraft,” or “The powers that be are ordained of God.” Besides, the infection spread, and to hear what Jack Swing was doing elsewhere encouraged others not to be behindhand with their neighbours.

So the mandate had gone out, and there were a few at Elchester ready to arrange for a rising at Uphill and Downhill. Dan Hewlett was known to them in the public-house, and he had an especial spite at Captain Carbonel, beginning from his knowledge of the tacit detection of his abstraction of the paper at Greenhow, going through his dismissal from working there, aggravated by the endeavour to remove Judith, embittered by the convictions as a poacher, and, perhaps, brought to a height by the influence over his eldest son. He hated the captain enough to be willing to direct the attack upon Greenhow, especially as it was known that the master was absent and engaged in summoning the yeomanry “to ride down the poor chaps,” as it was said, “who only wanted bread for their children’s mouths.”

There were men both at Uphill and Downhill, and even at Poppleby, who were quite willing to listen. The Poppleby folk, some of them, believed that riot was the only way to get reform, more of the villagers thought it was the only way of getting rid of the machines, the object of mysterious dread for the future, and more still, chiefly ne’er-do-wells and great idle lads, were ready for any mischief that might be going; and full of curiosity and delight at what Jack Swing might be about to do.

These youths, some of them at work and some not, dispersed the news through the village and fields that there was to be a great rising of the people’s friends, and that Gobbleall’s machine was to besomewhere. All were to meet at the randygo—supposed to mean rendezvous—at the cross-road, and as for those who did not, it would be the worse for them, and worse than all for them that told clacking women who might carry the tale up to Greenhow.

The summons was indeed not given till the men were well out of reach of their clacking women, but at work in the fields, and then a party began—not to march—they could not have done that to save their lives, but to tramp out of Poppleby, shouting to any one whom they saw in the fields to come with them and stand up for the people’s rights. At Downhill their numbers increased by all the noisy fellows, and some who fancied great good was to be gained somehow, though some wiser wives called out to them not to get into a row, nor let themselves be drawn into what they would be sorry for. At the “Fox and Hounds” they tarried and demanded a glass of beer all round, which Mr Oldfellow was really afraid to refuse. He was a timid man, half on their side, half on that of the gentry, and he saw there were enough of them to sack his cellars if he demurred.

There, too, amid much laughter, they all disguised themselves, some blackening their faces with soot, others whitening them with chalk, and some putting on the women’s cloaks, bonnets, or aprons.

Then they collected Uphill men.

“We are come for your good,” said Jack Swing, or the man who passed for him, wearing a long Punch-like nose. “We are come to help you; and where’s the mean coward that won’t come along with us in his own cause? There will be no living for poor folks if those new-fangled machines be allowed to go on, and them Parliament folk vote out all that makes for the people. Down with them, I say! Up with Reform, and down with all the fools and cowards who won’t stand up for themselves.”

All this, garnished with foul words and abuse, and roared out from the top of the horse-block, was addressed to the crowd that began to gather.

Dan Hewlett, with a horrid white face, was going about persuading the men, and so were others. “Bless you, we don’t want to do no harm to the ladies, nor the children. We only wants to do away with them toady machines, as they wants to do all the work instead of men’s hands, as the Almighty meant, and is in Scripture.”

This was the plea to the better disposed, like Tom Seddon, who held out, “You’ll not hurt madam nor the little ones. She’ve been a kind lady, and the captain, he’s a good master, I will say that; and I don’t want to hurt ’em.”

“Nobody wants to hurt them; only to do away with they machines.”

“I tell you what,” was George Truman’s answer, “them machines are the captain’s, none of yours nor mine, and I won’t go for to damage ’em. No! I won’t have my face blacked nor whited, I’m an honest man, and not ashamed to show it. So I be going to my work.”

And off he went to his day’s work at Farmer Goodenough’s, and the others hissed him and hooted him, but did him no harm. Nobody made such a noise as Softy Sam, and together this frightened Jem Gibbs out of following him, though he much wished to do so. Will Mole, as soon as he heard any sounds, ran away headlong down towards the meadows, and hid himself in the long rushes. Cox, the constable, thought discretion the better part of valour; and long before the rabble rout appeared, set off to carry a pair of shoes home to Mrs Pearson at the Lone Farm.

Master Hewlett, the carpenter, looked in vain for John, his apprentice, and growled and grumbled that he did not appear; then, on perceiving the uproar, decided that he was gone after that “there father of his’n.” He wouldn’t have thought it of Jack. No; he wouldn’t; but sure enough it was “bred in the bone of him!” Master Hewlett went on with his planing; and when the troop, now amounting to about thirty grown men, besides a huge rabble of boys and girls, came along, and Dan shouted to him to come and stand up for the rights of the people, and down with that there “tyrum Gobbleall” and his machine to grind down the poor, he answered—

“Machine ain’t nothing to me. I minds my own business, and thou beest a fool, Dan, not to mind thine! And where’s that lad of thine? A trapesing after mischief, just like all idle fellows?”

“He bain’t a labourer, and has no feeling for them as is,” said Dan. “We wants your axe, though, George.”

“Not he! I dares you to touch him,” said George Hewlett in his unmoved way, smoothing off a long curled shaving, which fell on the ground. “There, that’s the worth of you all and your Jack Swing! Swing, ye will, Dan, if you don’t take the better care.”

Some one made a move as if to seize the axe, but George made one step, and lifted quietly the stout bit of timber he had been planing, and it was plain that a whole armoury of carpenter’s tools was on his side the bench.

“Come along,” said Dan, “he’s a coward and mean-spirited cur. Us shan’t do nothing with he.”

So on they went, all the kindnesses and benefits from Greenhow forgotten, and nothing remembered at the moment but grievances, mostly past, but more looked forward to as possible!

The women did remember. Judith Grey was in an agony, praying as she lay for Mrs Carbonel and the children. Widow Mole knew nothing, but was weeding the paths at Greenhow; Betsy Seddon and Molly Barnes were crying piteously “at thought of madam and her little girl as might be fraught to death by them there rascals.” But no one knew what to do! Some stayed at home, in fear for their husbands, but a good many followed in the wake of the men, to see what would happen, and to come in for a little excitement—whether it were fright, pity, or indignation.

“’Pon my word and honour,” said Lizzy Morris, “that there will be summat to talk on.”

Chapter Twenty Two.Great Mary and Little Mary.“Who’ll plough their fields? Who’ll do their drudgery for them? And work like horses to give them the harvest?”—Southey.Mrs Carbonel, having seen her two little ones laid down for their midday nap, was sitting down to write a note to her husband, while Sophia was gone to give her lesson at the school, when there came a tap to the drawing-room window, and looking up she saw Tirzah Todd’s brown face and her finger making signs to her. She felt displeased, and rose up, saying, “Why, Tirzah, if you want me, you had better come to the back door!”“Lady, you must come out this way. ’Tis Jack Swing a-coming, ma’am—yes, he is—with a whole lot of mischievous folks, to break the machine and burn the ricks, and what not. Hush, don’t ye hear ’em a hollering atop of the hill? They be gathering at the ‘Fox and Hounds,’ and I just couldn’t abear that you and the dear little children should be scared like, and the captain away. So,” as Mrs Carbonel’s lips moved in thanks and alarm, “if you would come with me, lady, and take the children, and come out this way, through the garden, where you wouldn’t meet none of ’em, I’ll take you down the short way to Farmer Pearson’s, or wherever you liked, where you wouldn’t hear nothing till ’tis over.”“Oh, Tirzah! You are very good. A fright would be a most fearful shock, and might be quite fatal to my little Mary. But oh, my sister and the servants and the Pucklechurches, I can’t leave them.”“My Hoggie was at home with the baby, and I sent her off to see Miss Sophy at the school, and tell her to come up to Pearson’s.”“But the Pucklechurches?”“Nobody will hurt them! Nobody means to hurt you,” said Tirzah, “I knows that! My man wouldn’t ha’ gone with them, but so as they promised faithful not to lay a finger on you, so you give ’em the money and the guns; but men don’t think of the dear little gal as is so nesh, so I thought I’d warn you to have her out of the way. Bless my heart, they’ll be coming. That was nigher.”Mrs Carbonel’s mind went through many thoughts in those few moments. She could not bear to desert her husband’s property and people in this stress, and yet she knew that to expose her tender little girl to the terrors of a violent mob would be fatal. And she decided on accepting Tirzah’s offer of safety and shelter. She ran upstairs, put on her bonnet, took her husband’s most essential papers out of his desk and pocketed them, together with some sovereigns and bank-notes, then quietly went into the nursery, where she desired Rachel Mole to put on her bonnet, take up the baby, and follow her, and herself was putting on little Mary’s small straw hat and cape, telling her that she was coming with mamma for a walk to see Mrs Pearson’s old turkey cock, when Mrs Pucklechurch burst in with two or three maids behind her.“Oh, ma’am, Jack Swing’s coming and all the rabble rout. What ever shall we do?” was the gasping, screaming cry.“Only be quiet. There’s nothing for any one to fear. If they do harm, it is to things, not people. I only go away for the sake of this child! No, Mary dear, nobody will hurt you. You are going for a nice early walk with mamma and baby and Rachel. You,”—to the maids—“may follow if you will feel safer so, but I do not believe there is any real danger to you. Betty Pucklechurch, please tell your husband that I do beg him not to resist. It would be of no use, his master would not wish it, only if he will take care that the poor cattle and horses come to no harm.”“He have gone to drive ’em off already to Longacre,” said Betty. “I tell’d he, he’d better stand by master’s goods, but he be a man for his cows, he be.”“Quite right of him,” said Mrs Carbonel. “Have you baby’s bottle, Rachel? Now, Mary dear, here’s your piece of seed cake.”The shouts and singing sounded alarmingly as if approaching by this time, and little Mary listened and said, “Funny mens singing.”It was very loud as the fugitives gained the verandah, where Tirzah waited with an angry light in her black eyes. “Oh! won’t I give it to Joe Todd,” she cried, “for turning against the best friend Hoglah ever had—or me either.”Mary, carrying her little Mary, and trying to keep a smile that might reassure her, followed Tirzah across the orchard on the opposite side of the house. They had to scramble through a gap in the hedge; Tirzah went over first, breaking it down further, then the baby was put into her arms, and Rachel came next, receiving Mary from her mother, who was telling her how funny it was to get over poor papa’s fence, all among the apple trees, and here was Don jumping after them. Don, the Clumber spaniel, wanted a bit of Mary’s cake, and this and her mother’s jump down from the hedge and over the ditch, happily distracted her attention, and made her laugh, while the three maids were screaming that here were the rascals, hundreds of them a-coming up the drive; they saw them over the apple trees when on the top of the hedge, and heard their horrid shouts. “Oh, the nasty villains, with black faces and all!”Mrs Carbonel dreaded these cries almost as much as the mob itself for her delicate child, and went on talking to her and saying all the nursery rhymes that would come into her head, walking as fast as she could without making her pace felt, though the little maid—albeit small and thin for five years old—was a heavy weight to carry for some distance over a rough stubble field for unaccustomed arms. Tirzah had the baby, who happily was too young to be even disturbed in his noontide sleep, and Rachel Mole had tarried with the other maids, unable to resist her curiosity to see what was doing at the farm since they were out of reach.The fugitives reached a stile which gave entrance to a rough pathway, through a copse, and it was only here, when her mother sat down on the trunk of a tree taking breath with a sense of safety, that little Mary began to cry and sob. “Oh, we are lost in the wood! Please, please, mamma, get out of it. Let us go home.”“No indeed, Mary, we aren’t lost! See, here’s the path. We are going to see Mrs Pearson’s pussy cat and her turkey.”“I don’t want to. Oh! the wolves will come and eat us up,” and she clung round her mother in real terror.“Wolves! No, indeed! There are no wolves in England, darling, here or anywhere.”“Rachel said the wolves would come if I went in here.”“Then Rachel was very silly. No, there are no wolves. No, Mary, only—see! the little rabbit. Come along, take hold of my hand, we will soon get out. Never mind; God is taking care of us. Come, we will say our hymn as we go on.”The mother said her verse, and Mary tried to follow, in a voice quivering with sobs. Those imaginary wolves were a far greater alarm and trouble to her than the real riot at her father’s farm. She clung round her mother’s gown, and there was no pacifying her but by taking her up in arms.“Let me take her, ma’am,” said Tirzah Todd, making over the sleeping Edmund to his mother. “Come, little lady, I’ll carry you so nice.”“No, no! Go away, ugly woman,” cried Mary ungratefully, flapping at her with her hands in terror at the brown face and big black eyes.“Oh, naughty, naughty Mary,” sighed the mother, “when Tirzah is so good, and wants to help you! Don’t be a naughty child!”But the word naughty provoked such a fit of crying that there was nothing for it but for Mrs Carbonel to pick the child up and struggle on as best she could, soothing her terror at the narrow paths and the unknown way, and the mysterious alarm of the woodlands, as well, perhaps, as the undefined sense of other people’s dread and agitation. However, the crying was quiet now, and the sounds of tumult at the farm were stifled by the trees, so that after a time—which seemed terribly long—the party emerged into an open meadow, whence they could see the gate leading to the high road, and beyond that the roof of Mrs Pearson’s house.But something else was to be seen far up the road. There was the flash of the sun from helmets! The Yeomanry were coming!“There’s papa!” cried Mrs Carbonel. “Papa in his pretty silver dress. Run on, run on, Mary, and see him.”Mary was let down, still drawing long sobs as she half ran, half toddled on, allowing herself to be pulled by Tirzah Todd’s free hand, while her mother sped on to the gate, just in time for the astonished greeting of one of the little troop.“Mrs Carbonel! What?”And the next moment her husband was off his horse and by her side with anxious inquiries.“Yes, yes, dear Edmund! We are all safe. Good Tirzah came to warn us. Make haste! They are at the farm. We shall be at Mrs Pearson’s. She,” (pointing to Tirzah) “sent to fetch Sophy from school. She’ll be there. Here are the children all safe.”“Papa, papa,” cried little Mary, feeling his silver-laced collar, and stroking his face as he kissed her.And from that time she was comforted though he had to leave her again at once. She had felt a father’s arm.“Tirzah Todd!” exclaimed Captain Carbonel, “I shall never forget what you have done for us. Never!”Tirzah curtsied, but said, “You’ll be good to my man, sir?”It was but a moment’s halt ere Captain Carbonel rode on to overtake the rest of the troop, who, on hearing that the outrage was really taking place, were riding on rapidly.Mrs Carbonel had not far to go before reaching the hospitable farm, where Mrs Pearson came out to receive her with many a “Dear, dear!” and “Dear heart!” and entreaty that she and the dear children would make themselves at home.But Sophy was not there, and had not been heard of, and Mrs Carbonel, in her anxiety, could not rest on the sofa in the parlour, after she had persuaded little Mary into eating her long-delayed dinner of some mutton hastily minced for her, and had seen her safely asleep and cuddling a kitten. Mrs Pearson was only too happy to have the baby to occupy her long-disused wicker cradle, and Tirzah had rushed off to the scene of action as soon as she had seen the lady safely housed.

“Who’ll plough their fields? Who’ll do their drudgery for them? And work like horses to give them the harvest?”—Southey.

“Who’ll plough their fields? Who’ll do their drudgery for them? And work like horses to give them the harvest?”—Southey.

Mrs Carbonel, having seen her two little ones laid down for their midday nap, was sitting down to write a note to her husband, while Sophia was gone to give her lesson at the school, when there came a tap to the drawing-room window, and looking up she saw Tirzah Todd’s brown face and her finger making signs to her. She felt displeased, and rose up, saying, “Why, Tirzah, if you want me, you had better come to the back door!”

“Lady, you must come out this way. ’Tis Jack Swing a-coming, ma’am—yes, he is—with a whole lot of mischievous folks, to break the machine and burn the ricks, and what not. Hush, don’t ye hear ’em a hollering atop of the hill? They be gathering at the ‘Fox and Hounds,’ and I just couldn’t abear that you and the dear little children should be scared like, and the captain away. So,” as Mrs Carbonel’s lips moved in thanks and alarm, “if you would come with me, lady, and take the children, and come out this way, through the garden, where you wouldn’t meet none of ’em, I’ll take you down the short way to Farmer Pearson’s, or wherever you liked, where you wouldn’t hear nothing till ’tis over.”

“Oh, Tirzah! You are very good. A fright would be a most fearful shock, and might be quite fatal to my little Mary. But oh, my sister and the servants and the Pucklechurches, I can’t leave them.”

“My Hoggie was at home with the baby, and I sent her off to see Miss Sophy at the school, and tell her to come up to Pearson’s.”

“But the Pucklechurches?”

“Nobody will hurt them! Nobody means to hurt you,” said Tirzah, “I knows that! My man wouldn’t ha’ gone with them, but so as they promised faithful not to lay a finger on you, so you give ’em the money and the guns; but men don’t think of the dear little gal as is so nesh, so I thought I’d warn you to have her out of the way. Bless my heart, they’ll be coming. That was nigher.”

Mrs Carbonel’s mind went through many thoughts in those few moments. She could not bear to desert her husband’s property and people in this stress, and yet she knew that to expose her tender little girl to the terrors of a violent mob would be fatal. And she decided on accepting Tirzah’s offer of safety and shelter. She ran upstairs, put on her bonnet, took her husband’s most essential papers out of his desk and pocketed them, together with some sovereigns and bank-notes, then quietly went into the nursery, where she desired Rachel Mole to put on her bonnet, take up the baby, and follow her, and herself was putting on little Mary’s small straw hat and cape, telling her that she was coming with mamma for a walk to see Mrs Pearson’s old turkey cock, when Mrs Pucklechurch burst in with two or three maids behind her.

“Oh, ma’am, Jack Swing’s coming and all the rabble rout. What ever shall we do?” was the gasping, screaming cry.

“Only be quiet. There’s nothing for any one to fear. If they do harm, it is to things, not people. I only go away for the sake of this child! No, Mary dear, nobody will hurt you. You are going for a nice early walk with mamma and baby and Rachel. You,”—to the maids—“may follow if you will feel safer so, but I do not believe there is any real danger to you. Betty Pucklechurch, please tell your husband that I do beg him not to resist. It would be of no use, his master would not wish it, only if he will take care that the poor cattle and horses come to no harm.”

“He have gone to drive ’em off already to Longacre,” said Betty. “I tell’d he, he’d better stand by master’s goods, but he be a man for his cows, he be.”

“Quite right of him,” said Mrs Carbonel. “Have you baby’s bottle, Rachel? Now, Mary dear, here’s your piece of seed cake.”

The shouts and singing sounded alarmingly as if approaching by this time, and little Mary listened and said, “Funny mens singing.”

It was very loud as the fugitives gained the verandah, where Tirzah waited with an angry light in her black eyes. “Oh! won’t I give it to Joe Todd,” she cried, “for turning against the best friend Hoglah ever had—or me either.”

Mary, carrying her little Mary, and trying to keep a smile that might reassure her, followed Tirzah across the orchard on the opposite side of the house. They had to scramble through a gap in the hedge; Tirzah went over first, breaking it down further, then the baby was put into her arms, and Rachel came next, receiving Mary from her mother, who was telling her how funny it was to get over poor papa’s fence, all among the apple trees, and here was Don jumping after them. Don, the Clumber spaniel, wanted a bit of Mary’s cake, and this and her mother’s jump down from the hedge and over the ditch, happily distracted her attention, and made her laugh, while the three maids were screaming that here were the rascals, hundreds of them a-coming up the drive; they saw them over the apple trees when on the top of the hedge, and heard their horrid shouts. “Oh, the nasty villains, with black faces and all!”

Mrs Carbonel dreaded these cries almost as much as the mob itself for her delicate child, and went on talking to her and saying all the nursery rhymes that would come into her head, walking as fast as she could without making her pace felt, though the little maid—albeit small and thin for five years old—was a heavy weight to carry for some distance over a rough stubble field for unaccustomed arms. Tirzah had the baby, who happily was too young to be even disturbed in his noontide sleep, and Rachel Mole had tarried with the other maids, unable to resist her curiosity to see what was doing at the farm since they were out of reach.

The fugitives reached a stile which gave entrance to a rough pathway, through a copse, and it was only here, when her mother sat down on the trunk of a tree taking breath with a sense of safety, that little Mary began to cry and sob. “Oh, we are lost in the wood! Please, please, mamma, get out of it. Let us go home.”

“No indeed, Mary, we aren’t lost! See, here’s the path. We are going to see Mrs Pearson’s pussy cat and her turkey.”

“I don’t want to. Oh! the wolves will come and eat us up,” and she clung round her mother in real terror.

“Wolves! No, indeed! There are no wolves in England, darling, here or anywhere.”

“Rachel said the wolves would come if I went in here.”

“Then Rachel was very silly. No, there are no wolves. No, Mary, only—see! the little rabbit. Come along, take hold of my hand, we will soon get out. Never mind; God is taking care of us. Come, we will say our hymn as we go on.”

The mother said her verse, and Mary tried to follow, in a voice quivering with sobs. Those imaginary wolves were a far greater alarm and trouble to her than the real riot at her father’s farm. She clung round her mother’s gown, and there was no pacifying her but by taking her up in arms.

“Let me take her, ma’am,” said Tirzah Todd, making over the sleeping Edmund to his mother. “Come, little lady, I’ll carry you so nice.”

“No, no! Go away, ugly woman,” cried Mary ungratefully, flapping at her with her hands in terror at the brown face and big black eyes.

“Oh, naughty, naughty Mary,” sighed the mother, “when Tirzah is so good, and wants to help you! Don’t be a naughty child!”

But the word naughty provoked such a fit of crying that there was nothing for it but for Mrs Carbonel to pick the child up and struggle on as best she could, soothing her terror at the narrow paths and the unknown way, and the mysterious alarm of the woodlands, as well, perhaps, as the undefined sense of other people’s dread and agitation. However, the crying was quiet now, and the sounds of tumult at the farm were stifled by the trees, so that after a time—which seemed terribly long—the party emerged into an open meadow, whence they could see the gate leading to the high road, and beyond that the roof of Mrs Pearson’s house.

But something else was to be seen far up the road. There was the flash of the sun from helmets! The Yeomanry were coming!

“There’s papa!” cried Mrs Carbonel. “Papa in his pretty silver dress. Run on, run on, Mary, and see him.”

Mary was let down, still drawing long sobs as she half ran, half toddled on, allowing herself to be pulled by Tirzah Todd’s free hand, while her mother sped on to the gate, just in time for the astonished greeting of one of the little troop.

“Mrs Carbonel! What?”

And the next moment her husband was off his horse and by her side with anxious inquiries.

“Yes, yes, dear Edmund! We are all safe. Good Tirzah came to warn us. Make haste! They are at the farm. We shall be at Mrs Pearson’s. She,” (pointing to Tirzah) “sent to fetch Sophy from school. She’ll be there. Here are the children all safe.”

“Papa, papa,” cried little Mary, feeling his silver-laced collar, and stroking his face as he kissed her.

And from that time she was comforted though he had to leave her again at once. She had felt a father’s arm.

“Tirzah Todd!” exclaimed Captain Carbonel, “I shall never forget what you have done for us. Never!”

Tirzah curtsied, but said, “You’ll be good to my man, sir?”

It was but a moment’s halt ere Captain Carbonel rode on to overtake the rest of the troop, who, on hearing that the outrage was really taking place, were riding on rapidly.

Mrs Carbonel had not far to go before reaching the hospitable farm, where Mrs Pearson came out to receive her with many a “Dear, dear!” and “Dear heart!” and entreaty that she and the dear children would make themselves at home.

But Sophy was not there, and had not been heard of, and Mrs Carbonel, in her anxiety, could not rest on the sofa in the parlour, after she had persuaded little Mary into eating her long-delayed dinner of some mutton hastily minced for her, and had seen her safely asleep and cuddling a kitten. Mrs Pearson was only too happy to have the baby to occupy her long-disused wicker cradle, and Tirzah had rushed off to the scene of action as soon as she had seen the lady safely housed.

Chapter Twenty Three.The Machine.“In bursts of outrage spread your judgment wide,And to your wrath cry out, ‘Be thou our guide.’”Wordsworth.Sophy was endeavouring to make the children remember who Joseph was, and thinking them unusually stupid, idle, and talkative, when, without ceremony, the door was banged open, and in tramped Hoglah Todd, with the baby in her arms, her sun-bonnet on her neck, and her black hair sticking wildly out. “Please, ma’am,” she began, “Jack Swing is up a-breaking the machine, and mother says you are to go to Farmer Pearson’s to be safe out of the way!”“Hoggie Todd,” began Mrs Thorpe, “that’s not the way to come into school,” but she could not finish, for voices broke out above the regulation school hush: “Yes, yes, father said,” and “Our Jem said,” and it ended in “Jack Swing’s a-coming to break up the machine.” Only one or two said, “Mother said as how it was a shame, and they’d get into trouble.”“Your mother sent you?” said Sophy to Hoglah.“Yes, ma’am. She’s gone up herself to tell madam, and take she to Pearson’s, and her said you’d better go there, back ways, or else stay here with governess till ’twas quieted down.”“Hark! They are holloaing.”Strange sounds were in fact to be heard, and the children, losing all sense of discipline, made a rush to snatch hats and bonnets, and poured out in a throng, tumbling over one another, Hoglah among the foremost. Mrs Thorpe, much terrified, began to clasp her hands and say, “Oh dear! oh dear, the wicked, ungrateful men, that they should do such things. Oh! Miss Sophy, you will stay here, won’t you?”“No, I must go and see after my sister and the children,” said Sophy, already at the door.“But they’ll be at Mr Pearson’s. The girl said so. Oh, stay, ma’am! Don’t venture. Pray, pray—”But Sophy had the door open, and with “I can’t. Thank you, no, I can’t.”There were the confused sounds of howling and singing on the top of the hill. Betsy Seddon, at her cottage door, called out, “Don’t go up there, miss; it’s no place for the likes of you!” but Sophy only answered, “My sister,” and dashed on.She could get into a field of Edmund’s by scrambling over a difficult gate, and, impelled by the sight of some rough-looking men slouching along, she got over it—she hardly knew how—and, after crossing it, came upon all the cows, pigs, and horses, with Pucklechurch presiding over them. He, too, said, “Doan’t ye go up there, Miss Sophy. Them mischievous chaps will be after them pigs, fools as they be, so I brought the poor dumb things out of the way of them, and you’d better be shut of it too, miss.”“But, my sister, Master Pucklechurch! I must see to her.”“She’ll be safe enow, miss. They don’t lift a hand to folks, as I’ve heard, but I’ll do my duty by the beastises.”He certainly seemed more bent on his duty to the “beastises” than that to his wife or his master’s wife; and yet, when Sophy proved deaf to all his persuasions, he muttered, “Wilful must to water, and Wilful must drink. But, ah! yon beastises be safe enow, poor dumb things, so I’ll e’en go after the maid, to see as her runs into no harm. She be a fine, spirity maid whatsome’er.”So on he plodded, in the rear of Sophy, who, with eager foot, had crossed the sloping home-field, and gained the straw yard, all deserted now except by the fowls. The red game cock was scratching and crowing there, as if the rabble rout were not plainly to be seen straggling along the drive.Still there was time for Sophy to fly to the house, where, at the door, she met Mrs Pucklechurch.“Bless my soul and honour, Miss Sophy. You here! The mistress, she’s gone with the children to Mr Pearson’s, and you’ll be in time to catch her up if you look sharp enough.”“I shall not run away. Some one ought to try to protect my brother’s property.”“Now, don’t ’ee, don’t ’ee, Miss Sophy. You’ll do no good with that lot, and only get hurt yourself.”But Sophy was not to be persuaded. She went manfully out to the gate, and shut it in the face of the disguised men, who came swaggering up towards it.“What’s your business here?” she demanded, in her young, clear voice.“Come, young woman,” said a man in a false nose and a green smock-frock, but whose voice had a town sound in it, and whose legs and feet were those of no rustic, “clear out of the way, or it will be the worse for you!”“What have you to do here on my brother’s ground?” again asked Sophy, standing there in her straw bonnet and pink cotton frock.“We don’t want to do nothing, miss,”—and that voice she knew for Dan Hewlett’s—“but to have down that new-fangled machine as takes away the work from the poor.”“What work of yours did it ever take away, Dan Hewlett?” said she. “Look here! it makes bread cheaper—”She had thought before of the chain of arguments, but they would not come in the face of the emergency; and besides, she felt that her voice would not carry her words beyond the three or four men who were close to the gate. She might as well have spoken to the raging sea when, as the gate was shaken, she went on with a fresh start, “I call it most cowardly and ungrateful—”At that moment she was seized from behind by two great brawny arms, and borne backward, struggling helplessly like a lamb in a bear’s embrace. She saw that, not only was the gate burst in, but that the throng were pressing in from the garden side, and she was not released until she was set down in Mrs Pucklechurch’s kitchen, and a gruff voice said, rather as if to a little child, “Bide where you be, and no one will go for to hurt you.”It was a huge figure, with a woman’s bonnet stuck upright over his chalked face, and a red cloak covering his smock-frock, and he was gone the next moment, while Mrs Pucklechurch, screaming and sobbing, clutched at Sophy, and held her tight, with, “Now, don’t, Miss Sophy, don’t ye! Bide still, I say!”“But, Edmund’s machine! His things and all!” gasped Sophy, still struggling.“Bless you, miss, you can’t do nothing with the likes of them, the born rascals; you would, may be, get a stone yourself and what would the master say to that?”“Oh! what are they doing now?” as a wild hurrah arose, and all sorts of confused noises. Mrs Pucklechurch had locked the door on her prisoner, but she was equally curious, and anxious for her old man; so, with one accord, they hurried up the stairs together, and looked out at an upper window, whence they could only see a wild crowd of hats, smock-frocks, and women’s clothes gathering about a heap where the poor machine used to stand, and whence a cloud of smoke began to rise, followed by a jet of flame, fed no doubt by the quantity of straw and chaff lying about. Sophy and Betty both shrieked and exclaimed, but Betty’s mind was chiefly full of her old man, and she saw his straw hat at last. He was standing in front of the verandah, before the front door, and, as they threw the window open, they heard his gruff voice—“Not I. Be off with you! I baint a-going to give my master’s property to a lot of rapscallion thieves and robbers like you, as should know better.”Then came the answer, “We don’t want none of his property. Only his guns and his money for the cause of the people.” And big sticks were brandished, and the throng thickened.“Oh, don’t ye hurt he!” screamed Betty. “He that never did you no harm! Don’t ye! Oh, Dan Hewlett! Oh-oh!”“Then throw us out the guns, old woman,” called up the black-faced figure, “and we’ll let him be.”“If you do,” shouted Pucklechurch—and then there was a rush in on him, and they could see no more, for he must have backed under the verandah. Betty made a dash for the front stairs, to come to his help, Sophy after her; but, before they could even tumble to the bottom, there was a change in the cries—“The soldiers! the soldiers! Oh-hoo-hoo-hoo!” There was a scamper and a scurry, a trampling of horses. The two trembling hands, getting in each other’s way, unfastened the door, which was not even locked, and beheld Pucklechurch gathering himself up with a bleeding head, a cloud of smoke and flame, and helmets and silver lace glancing through it. There had been no need to read the Riot Act; the enemy were tearing along all ways over the fields, except a few whom the horsemen had intercepted. Dan Hewlett and the black-faced leader, without his long nose, were two; the other three were—among the loudest, poor Softy Sam, who had been yelling wildly—big lads, or young men, one from Downhill, the others nearer home, howling and sobbing and praying to be let go. Captain Carbonel’s first thought was whether Pucklechurch was hurt, but the old man was standing up scratching his head, and Betty hovering over him. Then his eyes fell on his sister-in-law, and he exclaimed—“You here, Sophy! Your sister is very anxious!”But the fire was by this time getting ahead, and no one could attend to anything else. The prisoners were put into the servants’ hall, and locked in; the horses were tied up at a safe distance, the poor things rearing with alarm at the flame; the men were, under Sir Harry Hartman and Captain Carbonel’s orders, made to form a line from the pond, and hand on the pails and buckets that were available; but these were not very many, though the numbers of helpers were increased by the maids, who had crept back from the orchard, and by the shepherd and some even of the mob, conscious that they had been only lookers on, and “hadn’t done no harm.”It was a dry season, and the flames spread, catching the big barn, and then seeming to fly in great flakes like a devouring winged thing to the Pucklechurches’ thatch. Betty and her husband flew to fling out their more valued possessions, and were just in time to save them; but thence the fire, just as the water in the nearest pond was drying up, caught a hold on the dairy and the old thatched part of the farmhouse. Bellowings were heard from the captives that they would be burnt alive, and some one, it was never known who, let them out, for no sign of them appeared when all was over, though their prison was untouched by the fire. For even at that moment the Poppleby fire-engine galloped up the road, and was hailed with shouts of joy. It had a hose long enough to reach down to the brook in the meadow, and the hissing bursts of water poured down did at last check the flames before they had done much harm to the more modern portion of the house, though all the furniture was lying tumbled about in heaps on the lawn—Mary’s piano, with the baby’s cradle full of crockery on the top of it, and Edmund’s writing desk in the middle of a washing stand all upside down.The first thing Edmund did when the smoke wreaths alone were lingering about, was to send his groom down to the cellar, with a jug in his hand, to bring up some beer, which he proceeded to hand in the best breakfast-cups to all and sundry of the helpers, including Sir Harry Hartman, Sophy helping in the distribution with all her might.“Miss Carbonel, I think?” said Sir Harry, courteously, as she gave him the cup. “Were you the garrison?”Sophy laughed. “Yes, sir, except old Pucklechurch and his wife.”“Then I may congratulate you on being the bravest woman in Uphill,” said the old gentleman, raising his hat.It was getting dark, and they had to consider what was next to be done. Captain Carbonel was anxious about his wife and children, and Sir Harry was urging him to bring them to his house, while Mr Grantley, from Poppleby, who had come up on the alarm, urged the same upon him. It ended in a guard being told off, consisting of Cox, the constable of Uphill, who had emerged from no one knew where, the Downhill constable, and the shepherd, with one of the yeomen, who were to be entertained by Pucklechurch and the cook, and prevent any mischief being done to the scattered furniture before morning. The Pucklechurches and Mrs Mole, with Barton, were doing their best to bring in and attend to the live stock, all of which had been saved by Pucklechurch’s care.Then they rode off together, Sophy and the housemaid having already started across the fields, bearing whatever necessary baggage they could collect or carry for Mrs Carbonel and the little ones.Mrs Carbonel was at the door when her husband rode up, having only just managed to hush off her little Mary to sleep, and left her and the baby with Rachel Mole to watch over them. Poor thing, she had been in a terrible state of anxiety and terror for all these hours, so much the worse because of the need of keeping her little girl from being agitated by seeing her alarm or hearing the cries, exclamations, and fragments of news that Mrs Pearson and her daughters were rushing about with.When she saw him first, and Sophy a moment afterwards, she sprang up to him as he dismounted, and greeted him with a burst of sobs and thankful tears.“Why, Mary, Mary, what’s this? One would think I had been in a general engagement. You, a soldier’s wife! No; nobody’s a hair the worse! Here is Sir Harry Hartman wondering at you.”To hear of the presence of a stranger startled Mrs Carbonel into recovering herself, with “I beg your pardon,” and her pretty courtesy, with the tears still on her face; while the old gentleman kindly spoke of the grievous afternoon she had had, and all the time Mr and Mrs Pearson were entreating him to do them the honour to come in and drink a glass of wine—for cake and wine were then considered to bethe thingto offer guests in a farmhouse.Sir Harry, aware of what farmhouse port was apt to be, begged for a glass of home-brewed ale instead, but came in readily, hoping to persuade Mrs Carbonel to send for the Poppleby post-chaise, and let him take her and her children home. She was afraid, however, to disturb little Mary, and Mrs Pearson reckoned on housing them for the night, besides which his park was too far-off. So it was settled that Sophy, for whom there really was no room, should go to Poppleby Parsonage with Mr Grantley for the night, and she and Sir Harry only tarried to talk over the matter, and come to an understanding of the whole as far as might be.“Who warned you?” asked the captain.“The last person I should expect—Tirzah Todd, good woman,” said Mrs Carbonel. “She came and called me, and helped me over the hedges.”“And Hoglah came after me,” said Sophy, “and told me to come here, only I could not.”“You were the heroine of the whole, Miss Carbonel,” said Sir Harry.“Oh, don’t say so; I didn’t do any good at all,” said Sophy, becoming much ashamed of her attempt at haranguing. “Old Pucklechurch was the one, for he saved all the dear cows and horses, and was nearly letting himself be killed in the defence. But, oh! all the rest of them. To think of them treating us so after everything!”“Most likely they were compelled,” said gentle Mrs Carbonel.“They will hear of it again,” said Sir Harry. “Could you identify them, Miss Carbonel?”“A good many,” said Sophy, “though they had their faces chalked—that horrid Dan Hewlett for one.”“There can be no doubt of him, for he was one of the prisoners that got away,” said Captain Carbonel, in a repressive manner. “He has always been a mischievous fellow; but the remarkable thing is that it was his son who came to summon us this morning—John Hewlett, a very good, steady lad. By-the-by, has any one seen him? I sent him home by the Elchester coach. I wonder what has become of him.”

“In bursts of outrage spread your judgment wide,And to your wrath cry out, ‘Be thou our guide.’”Wordsworth.

“In bursts of outrage spread your judgment wide,And to your wrath cry out, ‘Be thou our guide.’”Wordsworth.

Sophy was endeavouring to make the children remember who Joseph was, and thinking them unusually stupid, idle, and talkative, when, without ceremony, the door was banged open, and in tramped Hoglah Todd, with the baby in her arms, her sun-bonnet on her neck, and her black hair sticking wildly out. “Please, ma’am,” she began, “Jack Swing is up a-breaking the machine, and mother says you are to go to Farmer Pearson’s to be safe out of the way!”

“Hoggie Todd,” began Mrs Thorpe, “that’s not the way to come into school,” but she could not finish, for voices broke out above the regulation school hush: “Yes, yes, father said,” and “Our Jem said,” and it ended in “Jack Swing’s a-coming to break up the machine.” Only one or two said, “Mother said as how it was a shame, and they’d get into trouble.”

“Your mother sent you?” said Sophy to Hoglah.

“Yes, ma’am. She’s gone up herself to tell madam, and take she to Pearson’s, and her said you’d better go there, back ways, or else stay here with governess till ’twas quieted down.”

“Hark! They are holloaing.”

Strange sounds were in fact to be heard, and the children, losing all sense of discipline, made a rush to snatch hats and bonnets, and poured out in a throng, tumbling over one another, Hoglah among the foremost. Mrs Thorpe, much terrified, began to clasp her hands and say, “Oh dear! oh dear, the wicked, ungrateful men, that they should do such things. Oh! Miss Sophy, you will stay here, won’t you?”

“No, I must go and see after my sister and the children,” said Sophy, already at the door.

“But they’ll be at Mr Pearson’s. The girl said so. Oh, stay, ma’am! Don’t venture. Pray, pray—”

But Sophy had the door open, and with “I can’t. Thank you, no, I can’t.”

There were the confused sounds of howling and singing on the top of the hill. Betsy Seddon, at her cottage door, called out, “Don’t go up there, miss; it’s no place for the likes of you!” but Sophy only answered, “My sister,” and dashed on.

She could get into a field of Edmund’s by scrambling over a difficult gate, and, impelled by the sight of some rough-looking men slouching along, she got over it—she hardly knew how—and, after crossing it, came upon all the cows, pigs, and horses, with Pucklechurch presiding over them. He, too, said, “Doan’t ye go up there, Miss Sophy. Them mischievous chaps will be after them pigs, fools as they be, so I brought the poor dumb things out of the way of them, and you’d better be shut of it too, miss.”

“But, my sister, Master Pucklechurch! I must see to her.”

“She’ll be safe enow, miss. They don’t lift a hand to folks, as I’ve heard, but I’ll do my duty by the beastises.”

He certainly seemed more bent on his duty to the “beastises” than that to his wife or his master’s wife; and yet, when Sophy proved deaf to all his persuasions, he muttered, “Wilful must to water, and Wilful must drink. But, ah! yon beastises be safe enow, poor dumb things, so I’ll e’en go after the maid, to see as her runs into no harm. She be a fine, spirity maid whatsome’er.”

So on he plodded, in the rear of Sophy, who, with eager foot, had crossed the sloping home-field, and gained the straw yard, all deserted now except by the fowls. The red game cock was scratching and crowing there, as if the rabble rout were not plainly to be seen straggling along the drive.

Still there was time for Sophy to fly to the house, where, at the door, she met Mrs Pucklechurch.

“Bless my soul and honour, Miss Sophy. You here! The mistress, she’s gone with the children to Mr Pearson’s, and you’ll be in time to catch her up if you look sharp enough.”

“I shall not run away. Some one ought to try to protect my brother’s property.”

“Now, don’t ’ee, don’t ’ee, Miss Sophy. You’ll do no good with that lot, and only get hurt yourself.”

But Sophy was not to be persuaded. She went manfully out to the gate, and shut it in the face of the disguised men, who came swaggering up towards it.

“What’s your business here?” she demanded, in her young, clear voice.

“Come, young woman,” said a man in a false nose and a green smock-frock, but whose voice had a town sound in it, and whose legs and feet were those of no rustic, “clear out of the way, or it will be the worse for you!”

“What have you to do here on my brother’s ground?” again asked Sophy, standing there in her straw bonnet and pink cotton frock.

“We don’t want to do nothing, miss,”—and that voice she knew for Dan Hewlett’s—“but to have down that new-fangled machine as takes away the work from the poor.”

“What work of yours did it ever take away, Dan Hewlett?” said she. “Look here! it makes bread cheaper—”

She had thought before of the chain of arguments, but they would not come in the face of the emergency; and besides, she felt that her voice would not carry her words beyond the three or four men who were close to the gate. She might as well have spoken to the raging sea when, as the gate was shaken, she went on with a fresh start, “I call it most cowardly and ungrateful—”

At that moment she was seized from behind by two great brawny arms, and borne backward, struggling helplessly like a lamb in a bear’s embrace. She saw that, not only was the gate burst in, but that the throng were pressing in from the garden side, and she was not released until she was set down in Mrs Pucklechurch’s kitchen, and a gruff voice said, rather as if to a little child, “Bide where you be, and no one will go for to hurt you.”

It was a huge figure, with a woman’s bonnet stuck upright over his chalked face, and a red cloak covering his smock-frock, and he was gone the next moment, while Mrs Pucklechurch, screaming and sobbing, clutched at Sophy, and held her tight, with, “Now, don’t, Miss Sophy, don’t ye! Bide still, I say!”

“But, Edmund’s machine! His things and all!” gasped Sophy, still struggling.

“Bless you, miss, you can’t do nothing with the likes of them, the born rascals; you would, may be, get a stone yourself and what would the master say to that?”

“Oh! what are they doing now?” as a wild hurrah arose, and all sorts of confused noises. Mrs Pucklechurch had locked the door on her prisoner, but she was equally curious, and anxious for her old man; so, with one accord, they hurried up the stairs together, and looked out at an upper window, whence they could only see a wild crowd of hats, smock-frocks, and women’s clothes gathering about a heap where the poor machine used to stand, and whence a cloud of smoke began to rise, followed by a jet of flame, fed no doubt by the quantity of straw and chaff lying about. Sophy and Betty both shrieked and exclaimed, but Betty’s mind was chiefly full of her old man, and she saw his straw hat at last. He was standing in front of the verandah, before the front door, and, as they threw the window open, they heard his gruff voice—

“Not I. Be off with you! I baint a-going to give my master’s property to a lot of rapscallion thieves and robbers like you, as should know better.”

Then came the answer, “We don’t want none of his property. Only his guns and his money for the cause of the people.” And big sticks were brandished, and the throng thickened.

“Oh, don’t ye hurt he!” screamed Betty. “He that never did you no harm! Don’t ye! Oh, Dan Hewlett! Oh-oh!”

“Then throw us out the guns, old woman,” called up the black-faced figure, “and we’ll let him be.”

“If you do,” shouted Pucklechurch—and then there was a rush in on him, and they could see no more, for he must have backed under the verandah. Betty made a dash for the front stairs, to come to his help, Sophy after her; but, before they could even tumble to the bottom, there was a change in the cries—

“The soldiers! the soldiers! Oh-hoo-hoo-hoo!” There was a scamper and a scurry, a trampling of horses. The two trembling hands, getting in each other’s way, unfastened the door, which was not even locked, and beheld Pucklechurch gathering himself up with a bleeding head, a cloud of smoke and flame, and helmets and silver lace glancing through it. There had been no need to read the Riot Act; the enemy were tearing along all ways over the fields, except a few whom the horsemen had intercepted. Dan Hewlett and the black-faced leader, without his long nose, were two; the other three were—among the loudest, poor Softy Sam, who had been yelling wildly—big lads, or young men, one from Downhill, the others nearer home, howling and sobbing and praying to be let go. Captain Carbonel’s first thought was whether Pucklechurch was hurt, but the old man was standing up scratching his head, and Betty hovering over him. Then his eyes fell on his sister-in-law, and he exclaimed—

“You here, Sophy! Your sister is very anxious!”

But the fire was by this time getting ahead, and no one could attend to anything else. The prisoners were put into the servants’ hall, and locked in; the horses were tied up at a safe distance, the poor things rearing with alarm at the flame; the men were, under Sir Harry Hartman and Captain Carbonel’s orders, made to form a line from the pond, and hand on the pails and buckets that were available; but these were not very many, though the numbers of helpers were increased by the maids, who had crept back from the orchard, and by the shepherd and some even of the mob, conscious that they had been only lookers on, and “hadn’t done no harm.”

It was a dry season, and the flames spread, catching the big barn, and then seeming to fly in great flakes like a devouring winged thing to the Pucklechurches’ thatch. Betty and her husband flew to fling out their more valued possessions, and were just in time to save them; but thence the fire, just as the water in the nearest pond was drying up, caught a hold on the dairy and the old thatched part of the farmhouse. Bellowings were heard from the captives that they would be burnt alive, and some one, it was never known who, let them out, for no sign of them appeared when all was over, though their prison was untouched by the fire. For even at that moment the Poppleby fire-engine galloped up the road, and was hailed with shouts of joy. It had a hose long enough to reach down to the brook in the meadow, and the hissing bursts of water poured down did at last check the flames before they had done much harm to the more modern portion of the house, though all the furniture was lying tumbled about in heaps on the lawn—Mary’s piano, with the baby’s cradle full of crockery on the top of it, and Edmund’s writing desk in the middle of a washing stand all upside down.

The first thing Edmund did when the smoke wreaths alone were lingering about, was to send his groom down to the cellar, with a jug in his hand, to bring up some beer, which he proceeded to hand in the best breakfast-cups to all and sundry of the helpers, including Sir Harry Hartman, Sophy helping in the distribution with all her might.

“Miss Carbonel, I think?” said Sir Harry, courteously, as she gave him the cup. “Were you the garrison?”

Sophy laughed. “Yes, sir, except old Pucklechurch and his wife.”

“Then I may congratulate you on being the bravest woman in Uphill,” said the old gentleman, raising his hat.

It was getting dark, and they had to consider what was next to be done. Captain Carbonel was anxious about his wife and children, and Sir Harry was urging him to bring them to his house, while Mr Grantley, from Poppleby, who had come up on the alarm, urged the same upon him. It ended in a guard being told off, consisting of Cox, the constable of Uphill, who had emerged from no one knew where, the Downhill constable, and the shepherd, with one of the yeomen, who were to be entertained by Pucklechurch and the cook, and prevent any mischief being done to the scattered furniture before morning. The Pucklechurches and Mrs Mole, with Barton, were doing their best to bring in and attend to the live stock, all of which had been saved by Pucklechurch’s care.

Then they rode off together, Sophy and the housemaid having already started across the fields, bearing whatever necessary baggage they could collect or carry for Mrs Carbonel and the little ones.

Mrs Carbonel was at the door when her husband rode up, having only just managed to hush off her little Mary to sleep, and left her and the baby with Rachel Mole to watch over them. Poor thing, she had been in a terrible state of anxiety and terror for all these hours, so much the worse because of the need of keeping her little girl from being agitated by seeing her alarm or hearing the cries, exclamations, and fragments of news that Mrs Pearson and her daughters were rushing about with.

When she saw him first, and Sophy a moment afterwards, she sprang up to him as he dismounted, and greeted him with a burst of sobs and thankful tears.

“Why, Mary, Mary, what’s this? One would think I had been in a general engagement. You, a soldier’s wife! No; nobody’s a hair the worse! Here is Sir Harry Hartman wondering at you.”

To hear of the presence of a stranger startled Mrs Carbonel into recovering herself, with “I beg your pardon,” and her pretty courtesy, with the tears still on her face; while the old gentleman kindly spoke of the grievous afternoon she had had, and all the time Mr and Mrs Pearson were entreating him to do them the honour to come in and drink a glass of wine—for cake and wine were then considered to bethe thingto offer guests in a farmhouse.

Sir Harry, aware of what farmhouse port was apt to be, begged for a glass of home-brewed ale instead, but came in readily, hoping to persuade Mrs Carbonel to send for the Poppleby post-chaise, and let him take her and her children home. She was afraid, however, to disturb little Mary, and Mrs Pearson reckoned on housing them for the night, besides which his park was too far-off. So it was settled that Sophy, for whom there really was no room, should go to Poppleby Parsonage with Mr Grantley for the night, and she and Sir Harry only tarried to talk over the matter, and come to an understanding of the whole as far as might be.

“Who warned you?” asked the captain.

“The last person I should expect—Tirzah Todd, good woman,” said Mrs Carbonel. “She came and called me, and helped me over the hedges.”

“And Hoglah came after me,” said Sophy, “and told me to come here, only I could not.”

“You were the heroine of the whole, Miss Carbonel,” said Sir Harry.

“Oh, don’t say so; I didn’t do any good at all,” said Sophy, becoming much ashamed of her attempt at haranguing. “Old Pucklechurch was the one, for he saved all the dear cows and horses, and was nearly letting himself be killed in the defence. But, oh! all the rest of them. To think of them treating us so after everything!”

“Most likely they were compelled,” said gentle Mrs Carbonel.

“They will hear of it again,” said Sir Harry. “Could you identify them, Miss Carbonel?”

“A good many,” said Sophy, “though they had their faces chalked—that horrid Dan Hewlett for one.”

“There can be no doubt of him, for he was one of the prisoners that got away,” said Captain Carbonel, in a repressive manner. “He has always been a mischievous fellow; but the remarkable thing is that it was his son who came to summon us this morning—John Hewlett, a very good, steady lad. By-the-by, has any one seen him? I sent him home by the Elchester coach. I wonder what has become of him.”

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