Barnaby Rudge, 80's Riots by Charles Dickens

'Can you bear this, Varden?' said his wife in a solemn voice,
laying down her knife and fork.

'Why, not very well, my dear,' rejoined the locksmith, 'but I try
to keep my temper.'

'Don't let there be words on my account, mim,' sobbed Miggs. 'It's
much the best that we should part. I wouldn't stay--oh, gracious
me!--and make dissensions, not for a annual gold mine, and found in
tea and sugar.'

Lest the reader should be at any loss to discover the cause of Miss
Miggs's deep emotion, it may be whispered apart that, happening to
be listening, as her custom sometimes was, when Gabriel and his
wife conversed together, she had heard the locksmith's joke
relative to the foreign black who played the tambourine, and
bursting with the spiteful feelings which the taunt awoke in her
fair breast, exploded in the manner we have witnessed. Matters
having now arrived at a crisis, the locksmith, as usual, and for
the sake of peace and quietness, gave in.

'What are you crying for, girl?' he said. 'What's the matter with
you? What are you talking about hatred for? I don't hate you; I
don't hate anybody. Dry your eyes and make yourself agreeable, in
Heaven's name, and let us all be happy while we can.'

The allied powers deeming it good generalship to consider this a
sufficient apology on the part of the enemy, and confession of
having been in the wrong, did dry their eyes and take it in good
part. Miss Miggs observed that she bore no malice, no not to her
greatest foe, whom she rather loved the more indeed, the greater
persecution she sustained. Mrs Varden approved of this meek and
forgiving spirit in high terms, and incidentally declared as a
closing article of agreement, that Dolly should accompany her to
the Clerkenwell branch of the association, that very night. This
was an extraordinary instance of her great prudence and policy;
having had this end in view from the first, and entertaining a
secret misgiving that the locksmith (who was bold when Dolly was in
question) would object, she had backed Miss Miggs up to this
point, in order that she might have him at a disadvantage. The
manoeuvre succeeded so well that Gabriel only made a wry face, and
with the warning he had just had, fresh in his mind, did not dare
to say one word.

The difference ended, therefore, in Miggs being presented with a
gown by Mrs Varden and half-a-crown by Dolly, as if she had
eminently distinguished herself in the paths of morality and
goodness. Mrs V., according to custom, expressed her hope that
Varden would take a lesson from what had passed and learn more
generous conduct for the time to come; and the dinner being now
cold and nobody's appetite very much improved by what had passed,
they went on with it, as Mrs Varden said, 'like Christians.'

As there was to be a grand parade of the Royal East London
Volunteers that afternoon, the locksmith did no more work; but sat
down comfortably with his pipe in his mouth, and his arm round his
pretty daughter's waist, looking lovingly on Mrs V., from time to
time, and exhibiting from the crown of his head to the sole of his
foot, one smiling surface of good humour. And to be sure, when it
was time to dress him in his regimentals, and Dolly, hanging about
him in all kinds of graceful winning ways, helped to button and
buckle and brush him up and get him into one of the tightest coats
that ever was made by mortal tailor, he was the proudest father in
all England.

'What a handy jade it is!' said the locksmith to Mrs Varden, who
stood by with folded hands--rather proud of her husband too--while
Miggs held his cap and sword at arm's length, as if mistrusting
that the latter might run some one through the body of its own
accord; 'but never marry a soldier, Doll, my dear.'

Dolly didn't ask why not, or say a word, indeed, but stooped her
head down very low to tie his sash.

'I never wear this dress,' said honest Gabriel, 'but I think of
poor Joe Willet. I loved Joe; he was always a favourite of mine.
Poor Joe!--Dear heart, my girl, don't tie me in so tight.'

Dolly laughed--not like herself at all--the strangest little laugh
that could be--and held her head down lower still.

'Poor Joe!' resumed the locksmith, muttering to himself; 'I always
wish he had come to me. I might have made it up between them, if
he had. Ah! old John made a great mistake in his way of acting by
that lad--a great mistake.--Have you nearly tied that sash, my
dear?'

What an ill-made sash it was! There it was, loose again and
trailing on the ground. Dolly was obliged to kneel down, and
recommence at the beginning.

'Never mind young Willet, Varden,' said his wife frowning; 'you
might find some one more deserving to talk about, I think.'

Miss Miggs gave a great sniff to the same effect.

'Nay, Martha,' cried the locksmith, 'don't let us bear too hard
upon him. If the lad is dead indeed, we'll deal kindly by his
memory.'

'A runaway and a vagabond!' said Mrs Varden.

Miss Miggs expressed her concurrence as before.

'A runaway, my dear, but not a vagabond,' returned the locksmith in
a gentle tone. 'He behaved himself well, did Joe--always--and was
a handsome, manly fellow. Don't call him a vagabond, Martha.'

Mrs Varden coughed--and so did Miggs.

'He tried hard to gain your good opinion, Martha, I can tell you,'
said the locksmith smiling, and stroking his chin. 'Ah! that he
did. It seems but yesterday that he followed me out to the Maypole
door one night, and begged me not to say how like a boy they used
him--say here, at home, he meant, though at the time, I recollect,
I didn't understand. "And how's Miss Dolly, sir?" says Joe,'
pursued the locksmith, musing sorrowfully, 'Ah! Poor Joe!'

'Well, I declare,' cried Miggs. 'Oh! Goodness gracious me!'

'What's the matter now?' said Gabriel, turning sharply to her,
'Why, if here an't Miss Dolly,' said the handmaid, stooping down to
look into her face, 'a-giving way to floods of tears. Oh mim! oh
sir. Raly it's give me such a turn,' cried the susceptible damsel,
pressing her hand upon her side to quell the palpitation of her
heart, 'that you might knock me down with a feather.'

The locksmith, after glancing at Miss Miggs as if he could have
wished to have a feather brought straightway, looked on with a
broad stare while Dolly hurried away, followed by that sympathising
young woman: then turning to his wife, stammered out, 'Is Dolly
ill? Have I done anything? Is it my fault?'

'Your fault!' cried Mrs V. reproachfully. 'There--you had better
make haste out.'

'What have I done?' said poor Gabriel. 'It was agreed that Mr
Edward's name was never to be mentioned, and I have not spoken of
him, have I?'

Mrs Varden merely replied that she had no patience with him, and
bounced off after the other two. The unfortunate locksmith wound
his sash about him, girded on his sword, put on his cap, and walked
out.

'I am not much of a dab at my exercise,' he said under his breath,
'but I shall get into fewer scrapes at that work than at this.
Every man came into the world for something; my department seems to
be to make every woman cry without meaning it. It's rather hard!'

But he forgot it before he reached the end of the street, and went
on with a shining face, nodding to the neighbours, and showering
about his friendly greetings like mild spring rain.

Chapter 42

The Royal East London Volunteers made a brilliant sight that day:
formed into lines, squares, circles, triangles, and what not, to
the beating of drums, and the streaming of flags; and performed a
vast number of complex evolutions, in all of which Serjeant Varden
bore a conspicuous share. Having displayed their military prowess
to the utmost in these warlike shows, they marched in glittering
order to the Chelsea Bun House, and regaled in the adjacent taverns
until dark. Then at sound of drum they fell in again, and
returned amidst the shouting of His Majesty's lieges to the place
from whence they came.

The homeward march being somewhat tardy,--owing to the un-
soldierlike behaviour of certain corporals, who, being gentlemen of
sedentary pursuits in private life and excitable out of doors,
broke several windows with their bayonets, and rendered it
imperative on the commanding officer to deliver them over to a
strong guard, with whom they fought at intervals as they came
along,--it was nine o'clock when the locksmith reached home. A
hackney-coach was waiting near his door; and as he passed it, Mr
Haredale looked from the window and called him by his name.

'The sight of you is good for sore eyes, sir,' said the locksmith,
stepping up to him. 'I wish you had walked in though, rather than
waited here.'

'There is nobody at home, I find,' Mr Haredale answered; 'besides,
I desired to be as private as I could.'

'Humph!' muttered the locksmith, looking round at his house.
'Gone with Simon Tappertit to that precious Branch, no doubt.'

Mr Haredale invited him to come into the coach, and, if he were not
tired or anxious to go home, to ride with him a little way that
they might have some talk together. Gabriel cheerfully complied,
and the coachman mounting his box drove off.

'Varden,' said Mr Haredale, after a minute's pause, 'you will be
amazed to hear what errand I am on; it will seem a very strange
one.'

'I have no doubt it's a reasonable one, sir, and has a meaning in
it,' replied the locksmith; 'or it would not be yours at all. Have
you just come back to town, sir?'

'But half an hour ago.'

'Bringing no news of Barnaby, or his mother?' said the locksmith
dubiously. 'Ah! you needn't shake your head, sir. It was a wild-
goose chase. I feared that, from the first. You exhausted all
reasonable means of discovery when they went away. To begin again
after so long a time has passed is hopeless, sir--quite hopeless.'

'Why, where are they?' he returned impatiently. 'Where can they
be? Above ground?'

'God knows,' rejoined the locksmith, 'many that I knew above it
five years ago, have their beds under the grass now. And the world
is a wide place. It's a hopeless attempt, sir, believe me. We
must leave the discovery of this mystery, like all others, to time,
and accident, and Heaven's pleasure.'

'Varden, my good fellow,' said Mr Haredale, 'I have a deeper
meaning in my present anxiety to find them out, than you can
fathom. It is not a mere whim; it is not the casual revival of my
old wishes and desires; but an earnest, solemn purpose. My
thoughts and dreams all tend to it, and fix it in my mind. I have
no rest by day or night; I have no peace or quiet; I am haunted.'

His voice was so altered from its usual tones, and his manner
bespoke so much emotion, that Gabriel, in his wonder, could only
sit and look towards him in the darkness, and fancy the expression
of his face.

'Do not ask me,' continued Mr Haredale, 'to explain myself. If I
were to do so, you would think me the victim of some hideous fancy.
It is enough that this is so, and that I cannot--no, I can not--lie
quietly in my bed, without doing what will seem to you
incomprehensible.'

'Since when, sir,' said the locksmith after a pause, 'has this
uneasy feeling been upon you?'

Mr Haredale hesitated for some moments, and then replied: 'Since
the night of the storm. In short, since the last nineteenth of
March.'

As though he feared that Varden might express surprise, or reason
with him, he hastily went on:

'You will think, I know, I labour under some delusion. Perhaps I
do. But it is not a morbid one; it is a wholesome action of the
mind, reasoning on actual occurrences. You know the furniture
remains in Mrs Rudge's house, and that it has been shut up, by my
orders, since she went away, save once a-week or so, when an old
neighbour visits it to scare away the rats. I am on my way there
now.'

'For what purpose?' asked the locksmith.

'To pass the night there,' he replied; 'and not to-night alone, but
many nights. This is a secret which I trust to you in case of any
unexpected emergency. You will not come, unless in case of strong
necessity, to me; from dusk to broad day I shall be there. Emma,
your daughter, and the rest, suppose me out of London, as I have
been until within this hour. Do not undeceive them. This is the
errand I am bound upon. I know I may confide it to you, and I rely
upon your questioning me no more at this time.'

With that, as if to change the theme, he led the astounded
locksmith back to the night of the Maypole highwayman, to the
robbery of Edward Chester, to the reappearance of the man at Mrs
Rudge's house, and to all the strange circumstances which
afterwards occurred. He even asked him carelessly about the man's
height, his face, his figure, whether he was like any one he had
ever seen--like Hugh, for instance, or any man he had known at any
time--and put many questions of that sort, which the locksmith,
considering them as mere devices to engage his attention and
prevent his expressing the astonishment he felt, answered pretty
much at random.

At length, they arrived at the corner of the street in which the
house stood, where Mr Haredale, alighting, dismissed the coach.
'If you desire to see me safely lodged,' he said, turning to the
locksmith with a gloomy smile, 'you can.'

Gabriel, to whom all former marvels had been nothing in comparison
with this, followed him along the narrow pavement in silence. When
they reached the door, Mr Haredale softly opened it with a key he
had about him, and closing it when Varden entered, they were left
in thorough darkness.

They groped their way into the ground-floor room. Here Mr
Haredale struck a light, and kindled a pocket taper he had brought
with him for the purpose. It was then, when the flame was full
upon him, that the locksmith saw for the first time how haggard,
pale, and changed he looked; how worn and thin he was; how
perfectly his whole appearance coincided with all that he had said
so strangely as they rode along. It was not an unnatural impulse
in Gabriel, after what he had heard, to note curiously the
expression of his eyes. It was perfectly collected and rational;--
so much so, indeed, that he felt ashamed of his momentary
suspicion, and drooped his own when Mr Haredale looked towards him,
as if he feared they would betray his thoughts.

'Will you walk through the house?' said Mr Haredale, with a glance
towards the window, the crazy shutters of which were closed and
fastened. 'Speak low.'

There was a kind of awe about the place, which would have rendered
it difficult to speak in any other manner. Gabriel whispered
'Yes,' and followed him upstairs.

Everything was just as they had seen it last. There was a sense of
closeness from the exclusion of fresh air, and a gloom and
heaviness around, as though long imprisonment had made the very
silence sad. The homely hangings of the beds and windows had begun
to droop; the dust lay thick upon their dwindling folds; and damps
had made their way through ceiling, wall, and floor. The boards
creaked beneath their tread, as if resenting the unaccustomed
intrusion; nimble spiders, paralysed by the taper's glare, checked
the motion of their hundred legs upon the wall, or dropped like
lifeless things upon the ground; the death-watch ticked; and the
scampering feet of rats and mice rattled behind the wainscot.

As they looked about them on the decaying furniture, it was strange
to find how vividly it presented those to whom it had belonged, and
with whom it was once familiar. Grip seemed to perch again upon
his high-backed chair; Barnaby to crouch in his old favourite
corner by the fire; the mother to resume her usual seat, and watch
him as of old. Even when they could separate these objects from
the phantoms of the mind which they invoked, the latter only glided
out of sight, but lingered near them still; for then they seemed to
lurk in closets and behind the doors, ready to start out and
suddenly accost them in well-remembered tones.

They went downstairs, and again into the room they had just now
left. Mr Haredale unbuckled his sword and laid it on the table,
with a pair of pocket pistols; then told the locksmith he would
light him to the door.

'But this is a dull place, sir,' said Gabriel lingering; 'may no
one share your watch?'

He shook his head, and so plainly evinced his wish to be alone,
that Gabriel could say no more. In another moment the locksmith
was standing in the street, whence he could see that the light once
more travelled upstairs, and soon returning to the room below,
shone brightly through the chinks of the shutters.

If ever man were sorely puzzled and perplexed, the locksmith was,
that night. Even when snugly seated by his own fireside, with Mrs
Varden opposite in a nightcap and night-jacket, and Dolly beside
him (in a most distracting dishabille) curling her hair, and
smiling as if she had never cried in all her life and never could--
even then, with Toby at his elbow and his pipe in his mouth, and
Miggs (but that perhaps was not much) falling asleep in the
background, he could not quite discard his wonder and uneasiness.
So in his dreams--still there was Mr Haredale, haggard and
careworn, listening in the solitary house to every sound that
stirred, with the taper shining through the chinks until the day
should turn it pale and end his lonely watching.

Chapter 43

Next morning brought no satisfaction to the locksmith's thoughts,
nor next day, nor the next, nor many others. Often after nightfall
he entered the street, and turned his eyes towards the well-known
house; and as surely as he did so, there was the solitary light,
still gleaming through the crevices of the window-shutter, while
all within was motionless, noiseless, cheerless, as a grave.
Unwilling to hazard Mr Haredale's favour by disobeying his strict
injunction, he never ventured to knock at the door or to make his
presence known in any way. But whenever strong interest and
curiosity attracted him to the spot--which was not seldom--the
light was always there.

If he could have known what passed within, the knowledge would have
yielded him no clue to this mysterious vigil. At twilight, Mr
Haredale shut himself up, and at daybreak he came forth. He never
missed a night, always came and went alone, and never varied his
proceedings in the least degree.

The manner of his watch was this. At dusk, he entered the house in
the same way as when the locksmith bore him company, kindled a
light, went through the rooms, and narrowly examined them. That
done, he returned to the chamber on the ground-floor, and laying
his sword and pistols on the table, sat by it until morning.

He usually had a book with him, and often tried to read, but never
fixed his eyes or thoughts upon it for five minutes together. The
slightest noise without doors, caught his ear; a step upon the
pavement seemed to make his heart leap.

He was not without some refreshment during the long lonely hours;
generally carrying in his pocket a sandwich of bread and meat, and
a small flask of wine. The latter diluted with large quantities of
water, he drank in a heated, feverish way, as though his throat
were dried; but he scarcely ever broke his fast, by so much as a
crumb of bread.

If this voluntary sacrifice of sleep and comfort had its origin, as
the locksmith on consideration was disposed to think, in any
superstitious expectation of the fulfilment of a dream or vision
connected with the event on which he had brooded for so many years,
and if he waited for some ghostly visitor who walked abroad when
men lay sleeping in their beds, he showed no trace of fear or
wavering. His stern features expressed inflexible resolution; his
brows were puckered, and his lips compressed, with deep and settled
purpose; and when he started at a noise and listened, it was not
with the start of fear but hope, and catching up his sword as
though the hour had come at last, he would clutch it in his tight-
clenched hand, and listen with sparkling eyes and eager looks,
until it died away.

These disappointments were numerous, for they ensued on almost
every sound, but his constancy was not shaken. Still, every night
he was at his post, the same stern, sleepless, sentinel; and still
night passed, and morning dawned, and he must watch again.

This went on for weeks; he had taken a lodging at Vauxhall in which
to pass the day and rest himself; and from this place, when the
tide served, he usually came to London Bridge from Westminster by
water, in order that he might avoid the busy streets.

One evening, shortly before twilight, he came his accustomed road
upon the river's bank, intending to pass through Westminster Hall
into Palace Yard, and there take boat to London Bridge as usual.
There was a pretty large concourse of people assembled round the
Houses of Parliament, looking at the members as they entered and
departed, and giving vent to rather noisy demonstrations of
approval or dislike, according to their known opinions. As he made
his way among the throng, he heard once or twice the No-Popery cry,
which was then becoming pretty familiar to the ears of most men;
but holding it in very slight regard, and observing that the idlers
were of the lowest grade, he neither thought nor cared about it,
but made his way along, with perfect indifference.

There were many little knots and groups of persons in Westminster
Hall: some few looking upward at its noble ceiling, and at the rays
of evening light, tinted by the setting sun, which streamed in
aslant through its small windows, and growing dimmer by degrees,
were quenched in the gathering gloom below; some, noisy passengers,
mechanics going home from work, and otherwise, who hurried quickly
through, waking the echoes with their voices, and soon darkening
the small door in the distance, as they passed into the street
beyond; some, in busy conference together on political or private
matters, pacing slowly up and down with eyes that sought the
ground, and seeming, by their attitudes, to listen earnestly from
head to foot. Here, a dozen squabbling urchins made a very Babel
in the air; there, a solitary man, half clerk, half mendicant,
paced up and down with hungry dejection in his look and gait; at
his elbow passed an errand-lad, swinging his basket round and
round, and with his shrill whistle riving the very timbers of the
roof; while a more observant schoolboy, half-way through, pocketed
his ball, and eyed the distant beadle as he came looming on. It
was that time of evening when, if you shut your eyes and open them
again, the darkness of an hour appears to have gathered in a
second. The smooth-worn pavement, dusty with footsteps, still
called upon the lofty walls to reiterate the shuffle and the tread
of feet unceasingly, save when the closing of some heavy door
resounded through the building like a clap of thunder, and drowned
all other noises in its rolling sound.

Mr Haredale, glancing only at such of these groups as he passed
nearest to, and then in a manner betokening that his thoughts were
elsewhere, had nearly traversed the Hall, when two persons before
him caught his attention. One of these, a gentleman in elegant
attire, carried in his hand a cane, which he twirled in a jaunty
manner as he loitered on; the other, an obsequious, crouching,
fawning figure, listened to what he said--at times throwing in a
humble word himself--and, with his shoulders shrugged up to his
ears, rubbed his hands submissively, or answered at intervals by an
inclination of the head, half-way between a nod of acquiescence,
and a bow of most profound respect.

In the abstract there was nothing very remarkable in this pair, for
servility waiting on a handsome suit of clothes and a cane--not to
speak of gold and silver sticks, or wands of office--is common
enough. But there was that about the well-dressed man, yes, and
about the other likewise, which struck Mr Haredale with no pleasant
feeling. He hesitated, stopped, and would have stepped aside and
turned out of his path, but at the moment, the other two faced
about quickly, and stumbled upon him before he could avoid them.

The gentleman with the cane lifted his hat and had begun to tender
an apology, which Mr Haredale had begun as hastily to acknowledge
and walk away, when he stopped short and cried, 'Haredale! Gad
bless me, this is strange indeed!'

'It is,' he returned impatiently; 'yes--a--'

'My dear friend,' cried the other, detaining him, 'why such great
speed? One minute, Haredale, for the sake of old acquaintance.'

'I am in haste,' he said. 'Neither of us has sought this meeting.
Let it be a brief one. Good night!'

'Fie, fie!' replied Sir John (for it was he), 'how very churlish!
We were speaking of you. Your name was on my lips--perhaps you
heard me mention it? No? I am sorry for that. I am really
sorry.--You know our friend here, Haredale? This is really a most
remarkable meeting!'

The friend, plainly very ill at ease, had made bold to press Sir
John's arm, and to give him other significant hints that he was
desirous of avoiding this introduction. As it did not suit Sir
John's purpose, however, that it should be evaded, he appeared
quite unconscious of these silent remonstrances, and inclined his
hand towards him, as he spoke, to call attention to him more
particularly.

The friend, therefore, had nothing for it, but to muster up the
pleasantest smile he could, and to make a conciliatory bow, as Mr
Haredale turned his eyes upon him. Seeing that he was recognised,
he put out his hand in an awkward and embarrassed manner, which was
not mended by its contemptuous rejection.

'Mr Gashford!' said Haredale, coldly. 'It is as I have heard then.
You have left the darkness for the light, sir, and hate those whose
opinions you formerly held, with all the bitterness of a renegade.
You are an honour, sir, to any cause. I wish the one you espouse
at present, much joy of the acquisition it has made.'

The secretary rubbed his hands and bowed, as though he would disarm
his adversary by humbling himself before him. Sir John Chester
again exclaimed, with an air of great gaiety, 'Now, really, this is
a most remarkable meeting!' and took a pinch of snuff with his
usual self-possession.

'Mr Haredale,' said Gashford, stealthily raising his eyes, and
letting them drop again when they met the other's steady gaze, is
too conscientious, too honourable, too manly, I am sure, to attach
unworthy motives to an honest change of opinions, even though it
implies a doubt of those he holds himself. Mr Haredale is too
just, too generous, too clear-sighted in his moral vision, to--'

'Yes, sir?' he rejoined with a sarcastic smile, finding the
secretary stopped. 'You were saying'--

Gashford meekly shrugged his shoulders, and looking on the ground
again, was silent.

'No, but let us really,' interposed Sir John at this juncture, 'let
us really, for a moment, contemplate the very remarkable character
of this meeting. Haredale, my dear friend, pardon me if I think
you are not sufficiently impressed with its singularity. Here we
stand, by no previous appointment or arrangement, three old
schoolfellows, in Westminster Hall; three old boarders in a
remarkably dull and shady seminary at Saint Omer's, where you,
being Catholics and of necessity educated out of England, were
brought up; and where I, being a promising young Protestant at that
time, was sent to learn the French tongue from a native of Paris!'

'Add to the singularity, Sir John,' said Mr Haredale, 'that some of
you Protestants of promise are at this moment leagued in yonder
building, to prevent our having the surpassing and unheard-of
privilege of teaching our children to read and write--here--in this
land, where thousands of us enter your service every year, and to
preserve the freedom of which, we die in bloody battles abroad, in
heaps: and that others of you, to the number of some thousands as
I learn, are led on to look on all men of my creed as wolves and
beasts of prey, by this man Gashford. Add to it besides the bare
fact that this man lives in society, walks the streets in broad
day--I was about to say, holds up his head, but that he does not--
and it will be strange, and very strange, I grant you.'

'Oh! you are hard upon our friend,' replied Sir John, with an
engaging smile. 'You are really very hard upon our friend!'

'Let him go on, Sir John,' said Gashford, fumbling with his gloves.
'Let him go on. I can make allowances, Sir John. I am honoured
with your good opinion, and I can dispense with Mr Haredale's. Mr
Haredale is a sufferer from the penal laws, and I can't expect his
favour.'

'You have so much of my favour, sir,' retorted Mr Haredale, with a
bitter glance at the third party in their conversation, 'that I am
glad to see you in such good company. You are the essence of your
great Association, in yourselves.'

'Now, there you mistake,' said Sir John, in his most benignant way.
'There--which is a most remarkable circumstance for a man of your
punctuality and exactness, Haredale--you fall into error. I don't
belong to the body; I have an immense respect for its members, but
I don't belong to it; although I am, it is certainly true, the
conscientious opponent of your being relieved. I feel it my duty
to be so; it is a most unfortunate necessity; and cost me a bitter
struggle.--Will you try this box? If you don't object to a
trifling infusion of a very chaste scent, you'll find its flavour
exquisite.'

'I ask your pardon, Sir John,' said Mr Haredale, declining the
proffer with a motion of his hand, 'for having ranked you among the
humble instruments who are obvious and in all men's sight. I
should have done more justice to your genius. Men of your capacity
plot in secrecy and safety, and leave exposed posts to the duller
wits.'

'Don't apologise, for the world,' replied Sir John sweetly; 'old
friends like you and I, may be allowed some freedoms, or the deuce
is in it.'

Gashford, who had been very restless all this time, but had not
once looked up, now turned to Sir John, and ventured to mutter
something to the effect that he must go, or my lord would perhaps
be waiting.

'Don't distress yourself, good sir,' said Mr Haredale, 'I'll take
my leave, and put you at your ease--' which he was about to do
without ceremony, when he was stayed by a buzz and murmur at the
upper end of the hall, and, looking in that direction, saw Lord
George Gordon coming in, with a crowd of people round him.

There was a lurking look of triumph, though very differently
expressed, in the faces of his two companions, which made it a
natural impulse on Mr Haredale's part not to give way before this
leader, but to stand there while he passed. He drew himself up
and, clasping his hands behind him, looked on with a proud and
scornful aspect, while Lord George slowly advanced (for the press
was great about him) towards the spot where they were standing.

He had left the House of Commons but that moment, and had come
straight down into the Hall, bringing with him, as his custom was,
intelligence of what had been said that night in reference to the
Papists, and what petitions had been presented in their favour, and
who had supported them, and when the bill was to be brought in, and
when it would be advisable to present their own Great Protestant
petition. All this he told the persons about him in a loud voice,
and with great abundance of ungainly gesture. Those who were
nearest him made comments to each other, and vented threats and
murmurings; those who were outside the crowd cried, 'Silence,' and
Stand back,' or closed in upon the rest, endeavouring to make a
forcible exchange of places: and so they came driving on in a very
disorderly and irregular way, as it is the manner of a crowd to do.

When they were very near to where the secretary, Sir John, and Mr
Haredale stood, Lord George turned round and, making a few remarks
of a sufliciently violent and incoherent kind, concluded with the
usual sentiment, and called for three cheers to back it. While
these were in the act of being given with great energy, he
extricated himself from the press, and stepped up to Gashford's
side. Both he and Sir John being well known to the populace, they
fell back a little, and left the four standing together.

'Mr Haredale, Lord George,' said Sir John Chester, seeing that the
nobleman regarded him with an inquisitive look. 'A Catholic
gentleman unfortunately--most unhappily a Catholic--but an esteemed
acquaintance of mine, and once of Mr Gashford's. My dear Haredale,
this is Lord George Gordon.'

'I should have known that, had I been ignorant of his lordship's
person,' said Mr Haredale. 'I hope there is but one gentleman in
England who, addressing an ignorant and excited throng, would speak
of a large body of his fellow-subjects in such injurious language
as I heard this moment. For shame, my lord, for shame!'

'I cannot talk to you, sir,' replied Lord George in a loud voice,
and waving his hand in a disturbed and agitated manner; 'we have
nothing in common.'

'We have much in common--many things--all that the Almighty gave
us,' said Mr Haredale; 'and common charity, not to say common sense
and common decency, should teach you to refrain from these
proceedings. If every one of those men had arms in their hands at
this moment, as they have them in their heads, I would not leave
this place without telling you that you disgrace your station.'

'I don't hear you, sir,' he replied in the same manner as before;
'I can't hear you. It is indifferent to me what you say. Don't
retort, Gashford,' for the secretary had made a show of wishing to
do so; 'I can hold no communion with the worshippers of idols.'

As he said this, he glanced at Sir John, who lifted his hands and
eyebrows, as if deploring the intemperate conduct of Mr Haredale,
and smiled in admiration of the crowd and of their leader.

'HE retort!' cried Haredale. 'Look you here, my lord. Do you know
this man?'

Lord George replied by laying his hand upon the shoulder of his
cringing secretary, and viewing him with a smile of confidence.

'This man,' said Mr Haredale, eyeing him from top to toe, 'who in
his boyhood was a thief, and has been from that time to this, a
servile, false, and truckling knave: this man, who has crawled and
crept through life, wounding the hands he licked, and biting those
he fawned upon: this sycophant, who never knew what honour, truth,
or courage meant; who robbed his benefactor's daughter of her
virtue, and married her to break her heart, and did it, with
stripes and cruelty: this creature, who has whined at kitchen
windows for the broken food, and begged for halfpence at our chapel
doors: this apostle of the faith, whose tender conscience cannot
bear the altars where his vicious life was publicly denounced--Do
you know this man?'

'Oh, really--you are very, very hard upon our friend!' exclaimed
Sir John.

'Let Mr Haredale go on,' said Gashford, upon whose unwholesome face
the perspiration had broken out during this speech, in blotches of
wet; 'I don't mind him, Sir John; it's quite as indifferent to me
what he says, as it is to my lord. If he reviles my lord, as you
have heard, Sir John, how can I hope to escape?'

'Is it not enough, my lord,' Mr Haredale continued, 'that I, as
good a gentleman as you, must hold my property, such as it is, by a
trick at which the state connives because of these hard laws; and
that we may not teach our youth in schools the common principles of
right and wrong; but must we be denounced and ridden by such men as
this! Here is a man to head your No-Popery cry! For shame. For
shame!'

The infatuated nobleman had glanced more than once at Sir John
Chester, as if to inquire whether there was any truth in these
statements concerning Gashford, and Sir John had as often plainly
answered by a shrug or look, 'Oh dear me! no.' He now said, in the
same loud key, and in the same strange manner as before:

'I have nothing to say, sir, in reply, and no desire to hear
anything more. I beg you won't obtrude your conversation, or these
personal attacks, upon me. I shall not be deterred from doing my
duty to my country and my countrymen, by any such attempts, whether
they proceed from emissaries of the Pope or not, I assure you.
Come, Gashford!'

They had walked on a few paces while speaking, and were now at the
Hall-door, through which they passed together. Mr Haredale,
without any leave-taking, turned away to the river stairs, which
were close at hand, and hailed the only boatman who remained there.

But the throng of people--the foremost of whom had heard every word
that Lord George Gordon said, and among all of whom the rumour had
been rapidly dispersed that the stranger was a Papist who was
bearding him for his advocacy of the popular cause--came pouring
out pell-mell, and, forcing the nobleman, his secretary, and Sir
John Chester on before them, so that they appeared to be at their
head, crowded to the top of the stairs where Mr Haredale waited
until the boat was ready, and there stood still, leaving him on a
little clear space by himself.

They were not silent, however, though inactive. At first some
indistinct mutterings arose among them, which were followed by a
hiss or two, and these swelled by degrees into a perfect storm.
Then one voice said, 'Down with the Papists!' and there was a
pretty general cheer, but nothing more. After a lull of a few
moments, one man cried out, 'Stone him;' another, 'Duck him;'
another, in a stentorian voice, 'No Popery!' This favourite cry
the rest re-echoed, and the mob, which might have been two hundred
strong, joined in a general shout.

Mr Haredale had stood calmly on the brink of the steps, until they
made this demonstration, when he looked round contemptuously, and
walked at a slow pace down the stairs. He was pretty near the
boat, when Gashford, as if without intention, turned about, and
directly afterwards a great stone was thrown by some hand, in the
crowd, which struck him on the head, and made him stagger like a
drunken man.

The blood sprung freely from the wound, and trickled down his coat.
He turned directly, and rushing up the steps with a boldness and
passion which made them all fall back, demanded:

'Who did that? Show me the man who hit me.'

Not a soul moved; except some in the rear who slunk off, and,
escaping to the other side of the way, looked on like indifferent
spectators.

'Who did that?' he repeated. 'Show me the man who did it. Dog,
was it you? It was your deed, if not your hand--I know you.'

He threw himself on Gashford as he said the words, and hurled him
to the ground. There was a sudden motion in the crowd, and some
laid hands upon him, but his sword was out, and they fell off
again.

'My lord--Sir John,'--he cried, 'draw, one of you--you are
responsible for this outrage, and I look to you. Draw, if you are
gentlemen.' With that he struck Sir John upon the breast with the
flat of his weapon, and with a burning face and flashing eyes stood
upon his guard; alone, before them all.

For an instant, for the briefest space of time the mind can readily
conceive, there was a change in Sir John's smooth face, such as no
man ever saw there. The next moment, he stepped forward, and laid
one hand on Mr Haredale's arm, while with the other he endeavoured
to appease the crowd.

'My dear friend, my good Haredale, you are blinded with passion--
it's very natural, extremely natural--but you don't know friends
from foes.'

'I know them all, sir, I can distinguish well--' he retorted,
almost mad with rage. 'Sir John, Lord George--do you hear me? Are
you cowards?'

'Never mind, sir,' said a man, forcing his way between and pushing
him towards the stairs with friendly violence, 'never mind asking
that. For God's sake, get away. What CAN you do against this
number? And there are as many more in the next street, who'll be
round dfrectly,'--indeed they began to pour in as he said the
words--'you'd be giddy from that cut, in the first heat of a
scuffle. Now do retire, sir, or take my word for it you'll be
worse used than you would be if every man in the crowd was a woman,
and that woman Bloody Mary. Come, sir, make haste--as quick as you
can.'

Mr Haredale, who began to turn faint and sick, felt how sensible
this advice was, and descended the steps with his unknown friend's
assistance. John Grueby (for John it was) helped him into the
boat, and giving her a shove off, which sent her thirty feet into
the tide, bade the waterman pull away like a Briton; and walked up
again as composedly as if he had just landed.

There was at first a slight disposition on the part of the mob to
resent this interference; but John looking particularly strong and
cool, and wearing besides Lord George's livery, they thought better
of it, and contented themselves with sending a shower of small
missiles after the boat, which plashed harmlessly in the water;
for she had by this time cleared the bridge, and was darting
swiftly down the centre of the stream.

From this amusement, they proceeded to giving Protestant knocks at
the doors of private houses, breaking a few lamps, and assaulting
some stray constables. But, it being whispered that a detachment
of Life Guards had been sent for, they took to their heels with
great expedition, and left the street quite clear.

Chapter 44

When the concourse separated, and, dividing into chance clusters,
drew off in various directions, there still remained upon the scene
of the late disturbance, one man. This man was Gashford, who,
bruised by his late fall, and hurt in a much greater degree by the
indignity he had undergone, and the exposure of which he had been
the victim, limped up and down, breathing curses and threats of
vengeance.

It was not the secretary's nature to waste his wrath in words.
While he vented the froth of his malevolence in those effusions, he
kept a steady eye on two men, who, having disappeared with the rest
when the alarm was spread, had since returned, and were now visible
in the moonlight, at no great distance, as they walked to and fro,
and talked together.

He made no move towards them, but waited patiently on the dark side
of the street, until they were tired of strolling backwards and
forwards and walked away in company. Then he followed, but at some
distance: keeping them in view, without appearing to have that
object, or being seen by them.

They went up Parliament Street, past Saint Martin's church, and
away by Saint Giles's to Tottenham Court Road, at the back of
which, upon the western side, was then a place called the Green
Lanes. This was a retired spot, not of the choicest kind, leading
into the fields. Great heaps of ashes; stagnant pools, overgrown
with rank grass and duckweed; broken turnstiles; and the upright
posts of palings long since carried off for firewood, which menaced
all heedless walkers with their jagged and rusty nails; were the
leading features of the landscape: while here and there a donkey,
or a ragged horse, tethered to a stake, and cropping off a wretched
meal from the coarse stunted turf, were quite in keeping with the
scene, and would have suggested (if the houses had not done so,
sufficiently, of themselves) how very poor the people were who
lived in the crazy huts adjacent, and how foolhardy it might prove
for one who carried money, or wore decent clothes, to walk that way
alone, unless by daylight.

Poverty has its whims and shows of taste, as wealth has. Some of
these cabins were turreted, some had false windows painted on their
rotten walls; one had a mimic clock, upon a crazy tower of four
feet high, which screened the chimney; each in its little patch of
ground had a rude seat or arbour. The population dealt in bones,
in rags, in broken glass, in old wheels, in birds, and dogs.
These, in their several ways of stowage, filled the gardens; and
shedding a perfume, not of the most delicious nature, in the air,
filled it besides with yelps, and screams, and howling.

Into this retreat, the secretary followed the two men whom he had
held in sight; and here he saw them safely lodged, in one of the
meanest houses, which was but a room, and that of small dimensions.
He waited without, until the sound of their voices, joined in a
discordant song, assured him they were making merry; and then
approaching the door, by means of a tottering plank which crossed
the ditch in front, knocked at it with his hand.

'Muster Gashfordl' said the man who opened it, taking his pipe from
his mouth, in evident surprise. 'Why, who'd have thought of this
here honour! Walk in, Muster Gashford--walk in, sir.'

Gashford required no second invitation, and entered with a gracious
air. There was a fire in the rusty grate (for though the spring
was pretty far advanced, the nights were cold), and on a stool
beside it Hugh sat smoking. Dennis placed a chair, his only one,
for the secretary, in front of the hearth; and took his seat again
upon the stool he had left when he rose to give the visitor
admission.

'What's in the wind now, Muster Gashford?' he said, as he resumed
his pipe, and looked at him askew. 'Any orders from head-quarters?
Are we going to begin? What is it, Muster Gashford?'

'Oh, nothing, nothing,' rejoined the secretary, with a friendly nod
to Hugh. 'We have broken the ice, though. We had a little spurt
to-day--eh, Dennis?'

'A very little one,' growled the hangman. 'Not half enough for me.'

'Nor me neither!' cried Hugh. 'Give us something to do with life
in it--with life in it, master. Ha, ha!'

'Why, you wouldn't,' said the secretary, with his worst expression
of face, and in his mildest tones, 'have anything to do, with--with
death in it?'

'I don't know that,' replied Hugh. 'I'm open to orders. I don't
care; not I.'

'Nor I!' vociferated Dennis.

'Brave fellows!' said the secretary, in as pastor-like a voice as
if he were commending them for some uncommon act of valour and
generosity. 'By the bye'--and here he stopped and warmed his
hands: then suddenly looked up--'who threw that stone to-day?'

Mr Dennis coughed and shook his head, as who should say, 'A mystery
indeed!' Hugh sat and smoked in silence.

'It was well done!' said the secretary, warming his hands again.
'I should like to know that man.'

'Would you?' said Dennis, after looking at his face to assure
himself that he was serious. 'Would you like to know that man,
Muster Gashford?'

'I should indeed,' replied the secretary.

'Why then, Lord love you,' said the hangman, in his hoarest
chuckle, as he pointed with his pipe to Hugh, 'there he sits.
That's the man. My stars and halters, Muster Gashford,' he added
in a whisper, as he drew his stool close to him and jogged him with
his elbow, 'what a interesting blade he is! He wants as much
holding in as a thorough-bred bulldog. If it hadn't been for me
to-day, he'd have had that 'ere Roman down, and made a riot of it,
in another minute.'

'And why not?' cried Hugh in a surly voice, as he overheard this
last remark. 'Where's the good of putting things off? Strike
while the iron's hot; that's what I say.'

'Ah!' retorted Dennis, shaking his head, with a kind of pity for
his friend's ingenuous youth; 'but suppose the iron an't hot,
brother! You must get people's blood up afore you strike, and have
'em in the humour. There wasn't quite enough to provoke 'em to-
day, I tell you. If you'd had your way, you'd have spoilt the fun
to come, and ruined us.'

'Dennis is quite right,' said Gashford, smoothly. 'He is
perfectly correct. Dennis has great knowledge of the world.'

'I ought to have, Muster Gashford, seeing what a many people I've
helped out of it, eh?' grinned the hangman, whispering the words
behind his hand.

The secretary laughed at this jest as much as Dennis could desire,
and when he had done, said, turning to Hugh:

'Dennis's policy was mine, as you may have observed. You saw, for
instance, how I fell when I was set upon. I made no resistance. I
did nothing to provoke an outbreak. Oh dear no!'

'No, by the Lord Harry!' cried Dennis with a noisy laugh, 'you went
down very quiet, Muster Gashford--and very flat besides. I thinks
to myself at the time "it's all up with Muster Gashford!" I never
see a man lay flatter nor more still--with the life in him--than
you did to-day. He's a rough 'un to play with, is that 'ere
Papist, and that's the fact.'

The secretary's face, as Dennis roared with laughter, and turned
his wrinkled eyes on Hugh who did the like, might have furnished a
study for the devil's picture. He sat quite silent until they
were serious again, and then said, looking round:

'We are very pleasant here; so very pleasant, Dennis, that but for
my lord's particular desire that I should sup with him, and the
time being very near at hand, I should he inclined to stay, until
it would be hardly safe to go homeward. I come upon a little
business--yes, I do--as you supposed. It's very flattering to you;
being this. If we ever should be obliged--and we can't tell, you
know--this is a very uncertain world'--

'I believe you, Muster Gashford,' interposed the hangman with a
grave nod. 'The uncertainties as I've seen in reference to this
here state of existence, the unexpected contingencies as have come
about!--Oh my eye!' Feeling the subject much too vast for
expression, he puffed at his pipe again, and looked the rest.

'I say,' resumed the secretary, in a slow, impressive way; 'we
can't tell what may come to pass; and if we should be obliged,
against our wills, to have recourse to violence, my lord (who has
suffered terribly to-day, as far as words can go) consigns to you
two--bearing in mind my recommendation of you both, as good staunch
men, beyond all doubt and suspicion--the pleasant task of
punishing this Haredale. You may do as you please with him, or
his, provided that you show no mercy, and no quarter, and leave no
two beams of his house standing where the builder placed them. You
may sack it, burn it, do with it as you like, but it must come
down; it must be razed to the ground; and he, and all belonging to
him, left as shelterless as new-born infants whom their mothers
have exposed. Do you understand me?' said Gashford, pausing, and
pressing his hands together gently.

'Understand you, master!' cried Hugh. 'You speak plain now. Why,
this is hearty!'

'I knew you would like it,' said Gashford, shaking him by the hand;
'I thought you would. Good night! Don't rise, Dennis: I would
rather find my way alone. I may have to make other visits here,
and it's pleasant to come and go without disturbing you. I can
find my way perfectly well. Good night!'

He was gone, and had shut the door behind him. They looked at each
other, and nodded approvingly: Dennis stirred up the fire.

'This looks a little more like business!' he said.

'Ay, indeed!' cried Hugh; 'this suits me!'

'I've heerd it said of Muster Gashford,' said the hangman, 'that
he'd a surprising memory and wonderful firmness--that he never
forgot, and never forgave.--Let's drink his health!'

Hugh readily complied--pouring no liquor on the floor when he drank
this toast--and they pledged the secretary as a man after their own
hearts, in a bumper.

Chapter 45

While the worst passions of the worst men were thus working in the
dark, and the mantle of religion, assumed to cover the ugliest
deformities, threatened to become the shroud of all that was good
and peaceful in society, a circumstance occurred which once more
altered the position of two persons from whom this history has long
been separated, and to whom it must now return.

In a small English country town, the inhabitants of which supported
themselves by the labour of their hands in plaiting and preparing
straw for those who made bonnets and other articles of dress and
ornament from that material,--concealed under an assumed name, and
living in a quiet poverty which knew no change, no pleasures, and
few cares but that of struggling on from day to day in one great
toil for bread,--dwelt Barnaby and his mother. Their poor cottage
had known no stranger's foot since they sought the shelter of its
roof five years before; nor had they in all that time held any
commerce or communication with the old world from which they had
fled. To labour in peace, and devote her labour and her life to
her poor son, was all the widow sought. If happiness can be said
at any time to be the lot of one on whom a secret sorrow preys, she
was happy now. Tranquillity, resignation, and her strong love of
him who needed it so much, formed the small circle of her quiet
joys; and while that remained unbroken, she was contented.

For Barnaby himself, the time which had flown by, had passed him
like the wind. The daily suns of years had shed no brighter gleam
of reason on his mind; no dawn had broken on his long, dark night.
He would sit sometimes--often for days together on a low seat by
the fire or by the cottage door, busy at work (for he had learnt
the art his mother plied), and listening, God help him, to the
tales she would repeat, as a lure to keep him in her sight. He had
no recollection of these little narratives; the tale of yesterday
was new to him upon the morrow; but he liked them at the moment;
and when the humour held him, would remain patiently within doors,
hearing her stories like a little child, and working cheerfully
from sunrise until it was too dark to see.

At other times,--and then their scanty earnings were barely
sufficient to furnish them with food, though of the coarsest sort,--
he would wander abroad from dawn of day until the twilight
deepened into night. Few in that place, even of the children,
could be idle, and he had no companions of his own kind. Indeed
there were not many who could have kept up with him in his rambles,
had there been a legion. But there were a score of vagabond dogs
belonging to the neighbours, who served his purpose quite as well.
With two or three of these, or sometimes with a full half-dozen
barking at his heels, he would sally forth on some long expedition
that consumed the day; and though, on their return at nightfall,
the dogs would come home limping and sore-footed, and almost spent
with their fatigue, Barnaby was up and off again at sunrise with
some new attendants of the same class, with whom he would return in
like manner. On all these travels, Grip, in his little basket at
his master's back, was a constant member of the party, and when
they set off in fine weather and in high spirits, no dog barked
louder than the raven.

Their pleasures on these excursions were simple enough. A crust of
bread and scrap of meat, with water from the brook or spring,
sufficed for their repast. Barnaby's enjoyments were, to walk, and
run, and leap, till he was tired; then to lie down in the long
grass, or by the growing corn, or in the shade of some tall tree,
looking upward at the light clouds as they floated over the blue
surface of the sky, and listening to the lark as she poured out her
brilliant song. There were wild-flowers to pluck--the bright red
poppy, the gentle harebell, the cowslip, and the rose. There were
birds to watch; fish; ants; worms; hares or rabbits, as they darted
across the distant pathway in the wood and so were gone: millions
of living things to have an interest in, and lie in wait for, and
clap hands and shout in memory of, when they had disappeared. In
default of these, or when they wearied, there was the merry
sunlight to hunt out, as it crept in aslant through leaves and
boughs of trees, and hid far down--deep, deep, in hollow places--
like a silver pool, where nodding branches seemed to bathe and
sport; sweet scents of summer air breathing over fields of beans or
clover; the perfume of wet leaves or moss; the life of waving
trees, and shadows always changing. When these or any of them
tired, or in excess of pleasing tempted him to shut his eyes, there
was slumber in the midst of all these soft delights, with the
gentle wind murmuring like music in his ears, and everything around
melting into one delicious dream.

Their hut--for it was little more--stood on the outskirts of the
town, at a short distance from the high road, but in a secluded
place, where few chance passengers strayed at any season of the
year. It had a plot of garden-ground attached, which Barnaby, in
fits and starts of working, trimmed, and kept in order. Within
doors and without, his mother laboured for their common good; and
hail, rain, snow, or sunshine, found no difference in her.

Though so far removed from the scenes of her past life, and with so
little thought or hope of ever visiting them again, she seemed to
have a strange desire to know what happened in the busy world. Any
old newspaper, or scrap of intelligence from London, she caught at
with avidity. The excitement it produced was not of a pleasurable
kind, for her manner at such times expressed the keenest anxiety
and dread; but it never faded in the least degree. Then, and in
stormy winter nights, when the wind blew loud and strong, the old
expression came into her face, and she would be seized with a fit
of trembling, like one who had an ague. But Barnaby noted little
of this; and putting a great constraint upon herself, she usually
recovered her accustomed manner before the change had caught his
observation.

Grip was by no means an idle or unprofitable member of the humble
household. Partly by dint of Barnaby's tuition, and partly by
pursuing a species of self-instruction common to his tribe, and
exerting his powers of observation to the utmost, he had acquired a
degree of sagacity which rendered him famous for miles round. His
conversational powers and surprising performances were the
universal theme: and as many persons came to see the wonderful
raven, and none left his exertions unrewarded--when he condescended
to exhibit, which was not always, for genius is capricious--his
earnings formed an important item in the common stock. Indeed, the
bird himself appeared to know his value well; for though he was
perfectly free and unrestrained in the presence of Barnaby and his
mother, he maintained in public an amazing gravity, and never
stooped to any other gratuitous performances than biting the ankles
of vagabond boys (an exercise in which he much delighted), killing
a fowl or two occasionally, and swallowing the dinners of various
neighbouring dogs, of whom the boldest held him in great awe and
dread.

Time had glided on in this way, and nothing had happened to disturb
or change their mode of life, when, one summer's night in June,
they were in their little garden, resting from the labours of the
day. The widow's work was yet upon her knee, and strewn upon the
ground about her; and Barnaby stood leaning on his spade, gazing at
the brightness in the west, and singing softly to himself.

'A brave evening, mother! If we had, chinking in our pockets, but
a few specks of that gold which is piled up yonder in the sky, we
should be rich for life.'

'We are better as we are,' returned the widow with a quiet smile.
'Let us be contented, and we do not want and need not care to have
it, though it lay shining at our feet.'

'Ay!' said Barnaby, resting with crossed arms on his spade, and
looking wistfully at the sunset, that's well enough, mother; but
gold's a good thing to have. I wish that I knew where to find it.
Grip and I could do much with gold, be sure of that.'

'What would you do?' she asked.

'What! A world of things. We'd dress finely--you and I, I mean;
not Grip--keep horses, dogs, wear bright colours and feathers, do
no more work, live delicately and at our ease. Oh, we'd find uses
for it, mother, and uses that would do us good. I would I knew
where gold was buried. How hard I'd work to dig it up!'

'You do not know,' said his mother, rising from her seat and laying
her hand upon his shoulder, 'what men have done to win it, and how
they have found, too late, that it glitters brightest at a
distance, and turns quite dim and dull when handled.'

'Ay, ay; so you say; so you think,' he answered, still looking
eagerly in the same direction. 'For all that, mother, I should
like to try.'

'Do you not see,' she said, 'how red it is? Nothing bears so many
stains of blood, as gold. Avoid it. None have such cause to hate
its name as we have. Do not so much as think of it, dear love. It
has brought such misery and suffering on your head and mine as few
have known, and God grant few may have to undergo. I would rather
we were dead and laid down in our graves, than you should ever come
to love it.'

For a moment Barnaby withdrew his eyes and looked at her with
wonder. Then, glancing from the redness in the sky to the mark
upon his wrist as if he would compare the two, he seemed about to
question her with earnestness, when a new object caught his
wandering attention, and made him quite forgetful of his purpose.

This was a man with dusty feet and garments, who stood, bare-
headed, behind the hedge that divided their patch of garden from
the pathway, and leant meekly forward as if he sought to mingle
with their conversation, and waited for his time to speak. His
face was turned towards the brightness, too, but the light that
fell upon it showed that he was blind, and saw it not.

'A blessing on those voices!' said the wayfarer. 'I feel the
beauty of the night more keenly, when I hear them. They are like
eyes to me. Will they speak again, and cheer the heart of a poor
traveller?'

'Have you no guide?' asked the widow, after a moment's pause.

'None but that,' he answered, pointing with his staff towards the
sun; 'and sometimes a milder one at night, but she is idle now.'

'Have you travelled far?'

'A weary way and long,' rejoined the traveller as he shook his
head. 'A weary, weary, way. I struck my stick just now upon the
bucket of your well--be pleased to let me have a draught of water,
lady.'

'Why do you call me lady?' she returned. 'I am as poor as you.'

'Your speech is soft and gentle, and I judge by that,' replied the
man. 'The coarsest stuffs and finest silks, are--apart from the
sense of touch--alike to me. I cannot judge you by your dress.'

'Come round this way,' said Barnaby, who had passed out at the
garden-gate and now stood close beside him. 'Put your hand in
mine. You're blind and always in the dark, eh? Are you frightened
in the dark? Do you see great crowds of faces, now? Do they grin
and chatter?'

'Alas!' returned the other, 'I see nothing. Waking or sleeping,
nothing.'

Barnaby looked curiously at his eyes, and touching them with his
fingers, as an inquisitive child might, led him towards the house.

'You have come a long distance, 'said the widow, meeting him at the
door. 'How have you found your way so far?'

'Use and necessity are good teachers, as I have heard--the best of
any,' said the blind man, sitting down upon the chair to which
Barnaby had led him, and putting his hat and stick upon the red-
tiled floor. 'May neither you nor your son ever learn under them.
They are rough masters.'

'You have wandered from the road, too,' said the widow, in a tone
of pity.

'Maybe, maybe,' returned the blind man with a sigh, and yet with
something of a smile upon his face, 'that's likely. Handposts and
milestones are dumb, indeed, to me. Thank you the more for this
rest, and this refreshing drink!'

As he spoke, he raised the mug of water to his mouth. It was
clear, and cold, and sparkling, but not to his taste nevertheless,
or his thirst was not very great, for he only wetted his lips and
put it down again.

He wore, hanging with a long strap round his neck, a kind of scrip
or wallet, in which to carry food. The widow set some bread and
cheese before him, but he thanked her, and said that through the
kindness of the charitable he had broken his fast once since
morning, and was not hungry. When he had made her this reply, he
opened his wallet, and took out a few pence, which was all it
appeared to contain.

'Might I make bold to ask,' he said, turning towards where Barnaby
stood looking on, 'that one who has the gift of sight, would lay
this out for me in bread to keep me on my way? Heaven's blessing
on the young feet that will bestir themselves in aid of one so
helpless as a sightless man!'

Barnaby looked at his mother, who nodded assent; in another moment
he was gone upon his charitable errand. The blind man sat
listening with an attentive face, until long after the sound of his
retreating footsteps was inaudible to the widow, and then said,
suddenly, and in a very altered tone:

'There are various degrees and kinds of blindness, widow. There
is the connubial blindness, ma'am, which perhaps you may have
observed in the course of your own experience, and which is a kind
of wilful and self-bandaging blindness. There is the blindness of
party, ma'am, and public men, which is the blindness of a mad bull
in the midst of a regiment of soldiers clothed in red. There is
the blind confidence of youth, which is the blindness of young
kittens, whose eyes have not yet opened on the world; and there is
that physical blindness, ma'am, of which I am, contrairy to my own
desire, a most illustrious example. Added to these, ma'am, is that
blindness of the intellect, of which we have a specimen in your
interesting son, and which, having sometimes glimmerings and
dawnings of the light, is scarcely to be trusted as a total
darkness. Therefore, ma'am, I have taken the liberty to get him
out of the way for a short time, while you and I confer together,
and this precaution arising out of the delicacy of my sentiments
towards yourself, you will excuse me, ma'am, I know.'

Having delivered himself of this speech with many flourishes of
manner, he drew from beneath his coat a flat stone bottle, and
holding the cork between his teeth, qualified his mug of water with
a plentiful infusion of the liquor it contained. He politely
drained the bumper to her health, and the ladies, and setting it
down empty, smacked his lips with infinite relish.

'I am a citizen of the world, ma'am,' said the blind man, corking
his bottle, 'and if I seem to conduct myself with freedom, it is
therefore. You wonder who I am, ma'am, and what has brought me
here. Such experience of human nature as I have, leads me to that
conclusion, without the aid of eyes by which to read the movements
of your soul as depicted in your feminine features. I will
satisfy your curiosity immediately, ma'am; immediately.' With
that he slapped his bottle on its broad back, and having put it
under his garment as before, crossed his legs and folded his hands,
and settled himself in his chair, previous to proceeding any
further.

The change in his manner was so unexpected, the craft and
wickedness of his deportment were so much aggravated by his
condition--for we are accustomed to see in those who have lost a
human sense, something in its place almost divine--and this
alteration bred so many fears in her whom he addressed, that she
could not pronounce one word. After waiting, as it seemed, for
some remark or answer, and waiting in vain, the visitor resumed:

'Madam, my name is Stagg. A friend of mine who has desired the
honour of meeting with you any time these five years past, has
commissioned me to call upon you. I should be glad to whisper that
gentleman's name in your ear.--Zounds, ma'am, are you deaf? Do you
hear me say that I should be glad to whisper my friend's name in
your ear?'

'You need not repeat it,' said the widow, with a stifled groan; 'I
see too well from whom you come.'

'But as a man of honour, ma'am,' said the blind man, striking
himself on the breast, 'whose credentials must not be disputed, I
take leave to say that I WILL mention that gentleman's name. Ay,
ay,' he added, seeming to catch with his quick ear the very motion
of her hand, 'but not aloud. With your leave, ma'am, I desire the
favour of a whisper.'

She moved towards him, and stooped down. He muttered a word in her
ear; and, wringing her hands, she paced up and down the room like
one distracted. The blind man, with perfect composure, produced
his bottle again, mixed another glassful; put it up as before; and,
drinking from time to time, followed her with his face in silence.

'You are slow in conversation, widow,' he said after a time,
pausing in his draught. 'We shall have to talk before your son.'

'What would you have me do?' she answered. 'What do you want?'

'We are poor, widow, we are poor,' he retorted, stretching out his
right hand, and rubbing his thumb upon its palm.

'Poor!' she cried. 'And what am I?'

'Comparisons are odious,' said the blind man. 'I don't know, I
don't care. I say that we are poor. My friend's circumstances are
indifferent, and so are mine. We must have our rights, widow, or
we must be bought off. But you know that, as well as I, so where
is the use of talking?'

She still walked wildly to and fro. At length, stopping abruptly
before him, she said:

'Is he near here?'

'He is. Close at hand.'

'Then I am lost!'

'Not lost, widow,' said the blind man, calmly; 'only found. Shall
I call him?'

'Not for the world,' she answered, with a shudder.

'Very good,' he replied, crossing his legs again, for he had made
as though he would rise and walk to the door. 'As you please,
widow. His presence is not necessary that I know of. But both he
and I must live; to live, we must eat and drink; to eat and drink,
we must have money:--I say no more.'

'Do you know how pinched and destitute I am?' she retorted. 'I do
not think you do, or can. If you had eyes, and could look around
you on this poor place, you would have pity on me. Oh! let your
heart be softened by your own affliction, friend, and have some
sympathy with mine.'

The blind man snapped his fingers as he answered:

'--Beside the question, ma'am, beside the question. I have the
softest heart in the world, but I can't live upon it. Many a
gentleman lives well upon a soft head, who would find a heart of
the same quality a very great drawback. Listen to me. This is a
matter of business, with which sympathies and sentiments have
nothing to do. As a mutual friend, I wish to arrange it in a
satisfactory manner, if possible; and thus the case stands.--If you
are very poor now, it's your own choice. You have friends who, in
case of need, are always ready to help you. My friend is in a more
destitute and desolate situation than most men, and, you and he
being linked together in a common cause, he naturally looks to you
to assist him. He has boarded and lodged with me a long time (for
as I said just now, I am very soft-hearted), and I quite approve of
his entertaining this opinion. You have always had a roof over
your head; he has always been an outcast. You have your son to
comfort and assist you; he has nobody at all. The advantages must
not be all one side. You are in the same boat, and we must divide
the ballast a little more equally.'

She was about to speak, but he checked her, and went on.

'The only way of doing this, is by making up a little purse now and
then for my friend; and that's what I advise. He bears you no
malice that I know of, ma'am: so little, that although you have
treated him harshly more than once, and driven him, I may say, out
of doors, he has that regard for you that I believe even if you
disappointed him now, he would consent to take charge of your son,
and to make a man of him.'

He laid a great stress on these latter words, and paused as if to
find out what effect they had produced. She only answered by her
tears.

'He is a likely lad,' said the blind man, thoughtfully, 'for many
purposes, and not ill-disposed to try his fortune in a little
change and bustle, if I may judge from what I heard of his talk
with you to-night.--Come. In a word, my friend has pressing
necessity for twenty pounds. You, who can give up an annuity, can
get that sum for him. It's a pity you should be troubled. You
seem very comfortable here, and it's worth that much to remain so.
Twenty pounds, widow, is a moderate demand. You know where to
apply for it; a post will bring it you.--Twenty pounds!'

She was about to answer him again, but again he stopped her.

'Don't say anything hastily; you might be sorry for it. Think of
it a little while. Twenty pounds--of other people's money--how
easy! Turn it over in your mind. I'm in no hurry. Night's coming
on, and if I don't sleep here, I shall not go far. Twenty pounds!
Consider of it, ma'am, for twenty minutes; give each pound a
minute; that's a fair allowance. I'll enjoy the air the while,
which is very mild and pleasant in these parts.'

With these words he groped his way to the door, carrying his chair
with him. Then seating himself, under a spreading honeysuckle, and
stretching his legs across the threshold so that no person could
pass in or out without his knowledge, he took from his pocket a
pipe, flint, steel and tinder-box, and began to smoke. It was a
lovely evening, of that gentle kind, and at that time of year, when
the twilight is most beautiful. Pausing now and then to let his
smoke curl slowly off, and to sniff the grateful fragrance of the
flowers, he sat there at his ease--as though the cottage were his
proper dwelling, and he had held undisputed possession of it all
his life--waiting for the widow's answer and for Barnaby's return.

Chapter 46

When Barnaby returned with the bread, the sight of the pious old
pilgrim smoking his pipe and making himself so thoroughly at home,
appeared to surprise even him; the more so, as that worthy person,
instead of putting up the loaf in his wallet as a scarce and
precious article, tossed it carelessly on the table, and producing
his bottle, bade him sit down and drink.

'For I carry some comfort, you see,' he said. 'Taste that. Is it
good?'

The water stood in Barnaby's eyes as he coughed from the strength
of the draught, and answered in the affirmative.

'Drink some more,' said the blind man; 'don't be afraid of it.
You don't taste anything like that, often, eh?'

'Often!' cried Barnaby. 'Never!'

'Too poor?' returned the blind man with a sigh. 'Ay. That's bad.
Your mother, poor soul, would be happier if she was richer,
Barnaby.'

'Why, so I tell her--the very thing I told her just before you came
to-night, when all that gold was in the sky,' said Barnaby, drawing
his chair nearer to him, and looking eagerly in his face. 'Tell
me. Is there any way of being rich, that I could find out?'

'Any way! A hundred ways.'

'Ay, ay?' he returned. 'Do you say so? What are they?--Nay,
mother, it's for your sake I ask; not mine;--for yours, indeed.
What are they?'

The blind man turned his face, on which there was a smile of
triumph, to where the widow stood in great distress; and answered,

'Why, they are not to be found out by stay-at-homes, my good
friend.'

'By stay-at-homes!' cried Barnaby, plucking at his sleeve. 'But I
am not one. Now, there you mistake. I am often out before the
sun, and travel home when he has gone to rest. I am away in the
woods before the day has reached the shady places, and am often
there when the bright moon is peeping through the boughs, and
looking down upon the other moon that lives in the water. As I
walk along, I try to find, among the grass and moss, some of that
small money for which she works so hard and used to shed so many
tears. As I lie asleep in the shade, I dream of it--dream of
digging it up in heaps; and spying it out, hidden under bushes; and
seeing it sparkle, as the dew-drops do, among the leaves. But I
never find it. Tell me where it is. I'd go there, if the journey
were a whole year long, because I know she would be happier when I
came home and brought some with me. Speak again. I'll listen to
you if you talk all night.'

The blind man passed his hand lightly over the poor fellow's face,
and finding that his elbows were planted on the table, that his
chin rested on his two hands, that he leaned eagerly forward, and
that his whole manner expressed the utmost interest and anxiety,
paused for a minute as though he desired the widow to observe this
fully, and then made answer:

'It's in the world, bold Barnaby, the merry world; not in solitary
places like those you pass your time in, but in crowds, and where
there's noise and rattle.'

'Good! good!' cried Barnaby, rubbing his hands. 'Yes! I love
that. Grip loves it too. It suits us both. That's brave!'

'--The kind of places,' said the blind man, 'that a young fellow
likes, and in which a good son may do more for his mother, and
himself to boot, in a month, than he could here in all his life--
that is, if he had a friend, you know, and some one to advise
with.'

'You hear this, mother?' cried Barnaby, turning to her with
delight. 'Never tell me we shouldn't heed it, if it lay shining
at out feet. Why do we heed it so much now? Why do you toil from
morning until night?'

'Surely,' said the blind man, 'surely. Have you no answer, widow?
Is your mind,' he slowly added, 'not made up yet?'

'Let me speak with you,' she answered, 'apart.'

'Lay your hand upon my sleeve,' said Stagg, arising from the table;
'and lead me where you will. Courage, bold Barnaby. We'll talk
more of this: I've a fancy for you. Wait there till I come back.
Now, widow.'

She led him out at the door, and into the little garden, where they
stopped.

'You are a fit agent,' she said, in a half breathless manner, 'and
well represent the man who sent you here.'

'I'll tell him that you said so,' Stagg retorted. 'He has a regard
for you, and will respect me the more (if possible) for your
praise. We must have our rights, widow.'

'Rights! Do you know,' she said, 'that a word from me--'

'Why do you stop?' returned the blind man calmly, after a long
pause. 'Do I know that a word from you would place my friend in
the last position of the dance of life? Yes, I do. What of that?
It will never be spoken, widow.'

'You are sure of that?'

'Quite--so sure, that I don't come here to discuss the question. I
say we must have our rights, or we must be bought off. Keep to
that point, or let me return to my young friend, for I have an
interest in the lad, and desire to put him in the way of making his
fortune. Bah! you needn't speak,' he added hastily; 'I know what
you would say: you have hinted at it once already. Have I no
feeling for you, because I am blind? No, I have not. Why do you
expect me, being in darkness, to be better than men who have their
sight--why should you? Is the hand of Heaven more manifest in my
having no eyes, than in your having two? It's the cant of you
folks to be horrified if a blind man robs, or lies, or steals; oh
yes, it's far worse in him, who can barely live on the few
halfpence that are thrown to him in streets, than in you, who can
see, and work, and are not dependent on the mercies of the world.
A curse on you! You who have five senses may be wicked at your
pleasure; we who have four, and want the most important, are to
live and be moral on our affliction. The true charity and justice
of rich to poor, all the world over!'

He paused a moment when he had said these words, and caught the
sound of money, jingling in her hand.

'Well?' he cried, quickly resuming his former manner. 'That should
lead to something. The point, widow?'

'First answer me one question,' she replied. 'You say he is close
at hand. Has he left London?'

'Being close at hand, widow, it would seem he has,' returned the
blind man.

'I mean, for good? You know that.'

'Yes, for good. The truth is, widow, that his making a longer stay
there might have had disagreeable consequences. He has come away
for that reason.'

'Listen,' said the widow, telling some money out, upon a bench
beside them. 'Count.'

'Six,' said the blind man, listening attentively. 'Any more?'

'They are the savings,' she answered, 'of five years. Six
guineas.'

He put out his hand for one of the coins; felt it carefully, put it
between his teeth, rung it on the bench; and nodded to her to
proceed.

'These have been scraped together and laid by, lest sickness or
death should separate my son and me. They have been purchased at
the price of much hunger, hard labour, and want of rest. If you
CAN take them--do--on condition that you leave this place upon the
instant, and enter no more into that room, where he sits now,
expecting your return.'

'Six guineas,' said the blind man, shaking his head, 'though of the
fullest weight that were ever coined, fall very far short of twenty
pounds, widow.'

'For such a sum, as you know, I must write to a distant part of the
country. To do that, and receive an answer, I must have time.'

'Two days?' said Stagg.

'More.'

'Four days?'

'A week. Return on this day week, at the same hour, but not to the
house. Wait at the corner of the lane.'

'Of course,' said the blind man, with a crafty look, 'I shall find
you there?'

'Where else can I take refuge? Is it not enough that you have made
a beggar of me, and that I have sacrificed my whole store, so
hardly earned, to preserve this home?'

'Humph!' said the blind man, after some consideration. 'Set me
with my face towards the point you speak of, and in the middle of
the road. Is this the spot?'

'It is.'

'On this day week at sunset. And think of him within doors.--For
the present, good night.'

She made him no answer, nor did he stop for any. He went slowly
away, turning his head from time to time, and stopping to listen,
as if he were curious to know whether he was watched by any one.
The shadows of night were closing fast around, and he was soon lost
in the gloom. It was not, however, until she had traversed the
lane from end to end, and made sure that he was gone, that she re-
entered the cottage, and hurriedly barred the door and window.

'Mother!' said Barnaby. 'What is the matter? Where is the blind
man?'

'He is gone.'

'Gone!' he cried, starting up. 'I must have more talk with him.
Which way did he take?'

'I don't know,' she answered, folding her arms about him. 'You
must not go out to-night. There are ghosts and dreams abroad.'

'Ay?' said Barnaby, in a frightened whisper.

'It is not safe to stir. We must leave this place to-morrow.'

'This place! This cottage--and the little garden, mother!'

'Yes! To-morrow morning at sunrise. We must travel to London;
lose ourselves in that wide place--there would be some trace of us
in any other town--then travel on again, and find some new abode.'

Little persuasion was required to reconcile Barnaby to anything
that promised change. In another minute, he was wild with delight;
in another, full of grief at the prospect of parting with his
friends the dogs; in another, wild again; then he was fearful of
what she had said to prevent his wandering abroad that night, and
full of terrors and strange questions. His light-heartedness in
the end surmounted all his other feelings, and lying down in his
clothes to the end that he might be ready on the morrow, he soon
fell fast asleep before the poor turf fire.

His mother did not close her eyes, but sat beside him, watching.
Every breath of wind sounded in her ears like that dreaded footstep
at the door, or like that hand upon the latch, and made the calm
summer night, a night of horror. At length the welcome day
appeared. When she had made the little preparations which were
needful for their journey, and had prayed upon her knees with many
tears, she roused Barnaby, who jumped up gaily at her summons.

His clothes were few enough, and to carry Grip was a labour of
love. As the sun shed his earliest beams upon the earth, they
closed the door of their deserted home, and turned away. The sky
was blue and bright. The air was fresh and filled with a thousand
perfumes. Barnaby looked upward, and laughed with all his heart.

But it was a day he usually devoted to a long ramble, and one of
the dogs--the ugliest of them all--came bounding up, and jumping
round him in the fulness of his joy. He had to bid him go back in
a surly tone, and his heart smote him while he did so. The dog
retreated; turned with a half-incredulous, half-imploring look;
came a little back; and stopped.

It was the last appeal of an old companion and a faithful friend--
cast off. Barnaby could bear no more, and as he shook his head and
waved his playmate home, he burst into tears.

'Oh mother, mother, how mournful he will be when he scratches at
the door, and finds it always shut!'

There was such a sense of home in the thought, that though her own
eyes overflowed she would not have obliterated the recollection of
it, either from her own mind or from his, for the wealth of the
whole wide world.

Chapter 47

In the exhaustless catalogue of Heaven's mercies to mankind, the
power we have of finding some germs of comfort in the hardest
trials must ever occupy the foremost place; not only because it
supports and upholds us when we most require to be sustained, but
because in this source of consolation there is something, we have
reason to believe, of the divine spirit; something of that goodness
which detects amidst our own evil doings, a redeeming quality;
something which, even in our fallen nature, we possess in common
with the angels; which had its being in the old time when they trod
the earth, and lingers on it yet, in pity.

How often, on their journey, did the widow remember with a grateful
heart, that out of his deprivation Barnaby's cheerfulness and
affection sprung! How often did she call to mind that but for
that, he might have been sullen, morose, unkind, far removed from
her--vicious, perhaps, and cruel! How often had she cause for
comfort, in his strength, and hope, and in his simple nature!
Those feeble powers of mind which rendered him so soon forgetful of
the past, save in brief gleams and flashes,--even they were a
comfort now. The world to him was full of happiness; in every
tree, and plant, and flower, in every bird, and beast, and tiny
insect whom a breath of summer wind laid low upon the ground, he
had delight. His delight was hers; and where many a wise son would
have made her sorrowful, this poor light-hearted idiot filled her
breast with thankfulness and love.

Their stock of money was low, but from the hoard she had told into
the blind man's hand, the widow had withheld one guinea. This,
with the few pence she possessed besides, was to two persons of
their frugal habits, a goodly sum in bank. Moreover they had Grip
in company; and when they must otherwise have changed the guinea,
it was but to make him exhibit outside an alehouse door, or in a
village street, or in the grounds or gardens of a mansion of the
better sort, and scores who would have given nothing in charity,
were ready to bargain for more amusement from the talking bird.

One day--for they moved slowly, and although they had many rides in
carts and waggons, were on the road a week--Barnaby, with Grip upon
his shoulder and his mother following, begged permission at a trim
lodge to go up to the great house, at the other end of the avenue,
and show his raven. The man within was inclined to give them
admittance, and was indeed about to do so, when a stout gentleman
with a long whip in his hand, and a flushed face which seemed to
indicate that he had had his morning's draught, rode up to the
gate, and called in a loud voice and with more oaths than the
occasion seemed to warrant to have it opened directly.

'Who hast thou got here?' said the gentleman angrily, as the man
threw the gate wide open, and pulled off his hat, 'who are these?
Eh? art a beggar, woman?'

The widow answered with a curtsey, that they were poor travellers.

'Vagrants,' said the gentleman, 'vagrants and vagabonds. Thee
wish to be made acquainted with the cage, dost thee--the cage, the
stocks, and the whipping-post? Where dost come from?'

She told him in a timid manner,--for he was very loud, hoarse, and
red-faced,--and besought him not to be angry, for they meant no
harm, and would go upon their way that moment.

'Don't he too sure of that,' replied the gentleman, 'we don't allow
vagrants to roam about this place. I know what thou want'st---
stray linen drying on hedges, and stray poultry, eh? What hast
got in that basket, lazy hound?'

'Grip, Grip, Grip--Grip the clever, Grip the wicked, Grip the
knowing--Grip, Grip, Grip,' cried the raven, whom Barnaby had shut
up on the approach of this stern personage. 'I'm a devil I'm a
devil I'm a devil, Never say die Hurrah Bow wow wow, Polly put the
kettle on we'll all have tea.'

'Take the vermin out, scoundrel,' said the gentleman, 'and let me
see him.'

Barnaby, thus condescendingly addressed, produced his bird, but not
without much fear and trembling, and set him down upon the ground;
which he had no sooner done than Grip drew fifty corks at least,
and then began to dance; at the same time eyeing the gentleman with
surprising insolence of manner, and screwing his head so much on
one side that he appeared desirous of screwing it off upon the spot.

The cork-drawing seemed to make a greater impression on the
gentleman's mind, than the raven's power of speech, and was indeed
particularly adapted to his habits and capacity. He desired to
have that done again, but despite his being very peremptory, and
notwithstanding that Barnaby coaxed to the utmost, Grip turned a
deaf ear to the request, and preserved a dead silence.

'Bring him along,' said the gentleman, pointing to the house. But
Grip, who had watched the action, anticipated his master, by
hopping on before them;--constantly flapping his wings, and
screaming 'cook!' meanwhile, as a hint perhaps that there was
company coming, and a small collation would be acceptable.

Barnaby and his mother walked on, on either side of the gentleman
on horseback, who surveyed each of them from time to time in a
proud and coarse manner, and occasionally thundered out some
question, the tone of which alarmed Barnaby so much that he could
find no answer, and, as a matter of course, could make him no
reply. On one of these occasions, when the gentleman appeared
disposed to exercise his horsewhip, the widow ventured to inform
him in a low voice and with tears in her eyes, that her son was of
weak mind.

'An idiot, eh?' said the gentleman, looking at Barnaby as he spoke.
'And how long hast thou been an idiot?'

'She knows,' was Barnaby's timid answer, pointing to his mother--
'I--always, I believe.'

'From his birth,' said the widow.

'I don't believe it,' cried the gentleman, 'not a bit of it. It's
an excuse not to work. There's nothing like flogging to cure that
disorder. I'd make a difference in him in ten minutes, I'll be
bound.'

'Heaven has made none in more than twice ten years, sir,' said the
widow mildly.

'Then why don't you shut him up? we pay enough for county
institutions, damn 'em. But thou'd rather drag him about to
excite charity--of course. Ay, I know thee.'

Now, this gentleman had various endearing appellations among his
intimate friends. By some he was called 'a country gentleman of
the true school,' by some 'a fine old country gentleman,' by some
'a sporting gentleman,' by some 'a thorough-bred Englishman,' by
some 'a genuine John Bull;' but they all agreed in one respect, and
that was, that it was a pity there were not more like him, and that
because there were not, the country was going to rack and ruin
every day. He was in the commission of the peace, and could write
his name almost legibly; but his greatest qualifications were, that
he was more severe with poachers, was a better shot, a harder
rider, had better horses, kept better dogs, could eat more solid
food, drink more strong wine, go to bed every night more drunk and
get up every morning more sober, than any man in the county. In
knowledge of horseflesh he was almost equal to a farrier, in stable
learning he surpassed his own head groom, and in gluttony not a pig
on his estate was a match for him. He had no seat in Parliament
himself, but he was extremely patriotic, and usually drove his
voters up to the poll with his own hands. He was warmly attached
to church and state, and never appointed to the living in his gift
any but a three-bottle man and a first-rate fox-hunter. He
mistrusted the honesty of all poor people who could read and write,
and had a secret jealousy of his own wife (a young lady whom he had
married for what his friends called 'the good old English reason,'
that her father's property adjoined his own) for possessing those
accomplishments in a greater degree than himself. In short,
Barnaby being an idiot, and Grip a creature of mere brute instinct,
it would be very hard to say what this gentleman was.

He rode up to the door of a handsome house approached by a great
flight of steps, where a man was waiting to take his horse, and led
the way into a large hall, which, spacious as it was, was tainted
with the fumes of last night's stale debauch. Greatcoats, riding-
whips, bridles, top-boots, spurs, and such gear, were strewn about
on all sides, and formed, with some huge stags' antlers, and a few
portraits of dogs and horses, its principal embellishments.

Throwing himself into a great chair (in which, by the bye, he often
snored away the night, when he had been, according to his admirers,
a finer country gentleman than usual) he bade the man to tell his
mistress to come down: and presently there appeared, a little
flurried, as it seemed, by the unwonted summons, a lady much
younger than himself, who had the appearance of being in delicate
health, and not too happy.

'Here! Thou'st no delight in following the hounds as an
Englishwoman should have,' said the gentleman. 'See to this
here. That'll please thee perhaps.'

The lady smiled, sat down at a little distance from him, and
glanced at Barnaby with a look of pity.

'He's an idiot, the woman says,' observed the gentleman, shaking
his head; 'I don't believe it.'

'Are you his mother?' asked the lady.

She answered yes.

'What's the use of asking HER?' said the gentleman, thrusting his
hands into his breeches pockets. 'She'll tell thee so, of course.
Most likely he's hired, at so much a day. There. Get on. Make
him do something.'

Grip having by this time recovered his urbanity, condescended, at
Barnaby's solicitation, to repeat his various phrases of speech,
and to go through the whole of his performances with the utmost
success. The corks, and the never say die, afforded the gentleman
so much delight that he demanded the repetition of this part of the
entertainment, until Grip got into his basket, and positively
refused to say another word, good or bad. The lady too, was much
amused with him; and the closing point of his obstinacy so
delighted her husband that he burst into a roar of laughter, and
demanded his price.

Barnaby looked as though he didn't understand his meaning.
Probably he did not.

'His price,' said the gentleman, rattling the money in his pockets,
'what dost want for him? How much?'

'He's not to be sold,' replied Barnaby, shutting up the basket in a
great hurry, and throwing the strap over his shoulder. 'Mother,
come away.'

'Thou seest how much of an idiot he is, book-learner,' said the
gentleman, looking scornfully at his wife. 'He can make a bargain.
What dost want for him, old woman?'

'He is my son's constant companion,' said the widow. 'He is not to
be sold, sir, indeed.'

'Not to be sold!' cried the gentleman, growing ten times redder,
hoarser, and louder than before. 'Not to be sold!'

'Indeed no,' she answered. 'We have never thought of parting with
him, sir, I do assure you.'

He was evidently about to make a very passionate retort, when a few
murmured words from his wife happening to catch his ear, he turned
sharply round, and said, 'Eh? What?'

'We can hardly expect them to sell the bird, against their own
desire,' she faltered. 'If they prefer to keep him--'

'Prefer to keep him!' he echoed. 'These people, who go tramping
about the country a-pilfering and vagabondising on all hands,
prefer to keep a bird, when a landed proprietor and a justice asks
his price! That old woman's been to school. I know she has.
Don't tell me no,' he roared to the widow, 'I say, yes.'

Barnaby's mother pleaded guilty to the accusation, and hoped there
was no harm in it.

'No harm!' said the gentleman. 'No. No harm. No harm, ye old
rebel, not a bit of harm. If my clerk was here, I'd set ye in the
stocks, I would, or lay ye in jail for prowling up and down, on the
look-out for petty larcenies, ye limb of a gipsy. Here, Simon, put
these pilferers out, shove 'em into the road, out with 'em! Ye
don't want to sell the bird, ye that come here to beg, don't ye?
If they an't out in double-quick, set the dogs upon 'em!'

They waited for no further dismissal, but fled precipitately,
leaving the gentleman to storm away by himself (for the poor lady
had already retreated), and making a great many vain attempts to
silence Grip, who, excited by the noise, drew corks enough for a
city feast as they hurried down the avenue, and appeared to
congratulate himself beyond measure on having been the cause of the
disturbance. When they had nearly reached the lodge, another
servant, emerging from the shrubbery, feigned to be very active
in ordering them off, but this man put a crown into the widow's
hand, and whispering that his lady sent it, thrust them gently from
the gate.

This incident only suggested to the widow's mind, when they halted
at an alehouse some miles further on, and heard the justice's
character as given by his friends, that perhaps something more than
capacity of stomach and tastes for the kennel and the stable, were
required to form either a perfect country gentleman, a thoroughbred
Englishman, or a genuine John Bull; and that possibly the terms
were sometimes misappropriated, not to say disgraced. She little
thought then, that a circumstance so slight would ever influence
their future fortunes; but time and experience enlightened her in
this respect.

'Mother,' said Barnaby, as they were sitting next day in a waggon
which was to take them within ten miles of the capital, 'we're
going to London first, you said. Shall we see that blind man
there?'

She was about to answer 'Heaven forbid!' but checked herself, and
told him No, she thought not; why did he ask?

'He's a wise man,' said Barnaby, with a thoughtful countenance. 'I
wish that we may meet with him again. What was it that he said of
crowds? That gold was to be found where people crowded, and not
among the trees and in such quiet places? He spoke as if he loved
it; London is a crowded place; I think we shall meet him there.'

'But why do you desire to see him, love?' she asked.

'Because,' said Barnaby, looking wistfully at her, 'he talked to me
about gold, which is a rare thing, and say what you will, a thing
you would like to have, I know. And because he came and went away
so strangely--just as white-headed old men come sometimes to my
bed's foot in the night, and say what I can't remember when the
bright day returns. He told me he'd come back. I wonder why he
broke his word!'

'But you never thought of being rich or gay, before, dear Barnaby.
You have always been contented.'

He laughed and bade her say that again, then cried, 'Ay ay--oh
yes,' and laughed once more. Then something passed that caught his
fancy, and the topic wandered from his mind, and was succeeded by
another just as fleeting.

But it was plain from what he had said, and from his returning to
the point more than once that day, and on the next, that the blind
man's visit, and indeed his words, had taken strong possession of
his mind. Whether the idea of wealth had occurred to him for the
first time on looking at the golden clouds that evening--and images
were often presented to his thoughts by outward objects quite as
remote and distant; or whether their poor and humble way of life
had suggested it, by contrast, long ago; or whether the accident
(as he would deem it) of the blind man's pursuing the current of
his own remarks, had done so at the moment; or he had been
impressed by the mere circumstance of the man being blind, and,
therefore, unlike any one with whom he had talked before; it was
impossible to tell. She tried every means to discover, but in
vain; and the probability is that Barnaby himself was equally in
the dark.

It filled her with uneasiness to find him harping on this string,
but all that she could do, was to lead him quickly to some other
subject, and to dismiss it from his brain. To caution him against
their visitor, to show any fear or suspicion in reference to him,
would only be, she feared, to increase that interest with which
Barnaby regarded him, and to strengthen his desire to meet him once
again. She hoped, by plunging into the crowd, to rid herself of
her terrible pursuer, and then, by journeying to a distance and
observing increased caution, if that were possible, to live again
unknown, in secrecy and peace.

They reached, in course of time, their halting-place within ten
miles of London, and lay there for the night, after bargaining to
be carried on for a trifle next day, in a light van which was
returning empty, and was to start at five o'clock in the morning.
The driver was punctual, the road good--save for the dust, the
weather being very hot and dry--and at seven in the forenoon of
Friday the second of June, one thousand seven hundred and eighty,
they alighted at the foot of Westminster Bridge, bade their
conductor farewell, and stood alone, together, on the scorching
pavement. For the freshness which night sheds upon such busy
thoroughfares had already departed, and the sun was shining with
uncommon lustre.

Chapter 48

Uncertain where to go next, and bewildered by the crowd of people
who were already astir, they sat down in one of the recesses on the
bridge, to rest. They soon became aware that the stream of life
was all pouring one way, and that a vast throng of persons were
crossing the river from the Middlesex to the Surrey shore, in
unusual haste and evident excitement. They were, for the most
part, in knots of two or three, or sometimes half-a-dozen; they
spoke little together--many of them were quite silent; and hurried
on as if they had one absorbing object in view, which was common to
them all.

They were surprised to see that nearly every man in this great
concourse, which still came pouring past, without slackening in the
least, wore in his hat a blue cockade; and that the chance
passengers who were not so decorated, appeared timidly anxious to
escape observation or attack, and gave them the wall as if they
would conciliate them. This, however, was natural enough,
considering their inferiority in point of numbers; for the
proportion of those who wore blue cockades, to those who were
dressed as usual, was at least forty or fifty to one. There was no
quarrelling, however: the blue cockades went swarming on, passing
each other when they could, and making all the speed that was
possible in such a multitude; and exchanged nothing more than
looks, and very often not even those, with such of the passers-by
as were not of their number.

At first, the current of people had been confined to the two
pathways, and but a few more eager stragglers kept the road. But
after half an hour or so, the passage was completely blocked up by
the great press, which, being now closely wedged together, and
impeded by the carts and coaches it encountered, moved but slowly,
and was sometimes at a stand for five or ten minutes together.

After the lapse of nearly two hours, the numbers began to diminish
visibly, and gradually dwindling away, by little and little, left
the bridge quite clear, save that, now and then, some hot and dusty
man, with the cockade in his hat, and his coat thrown over his
shoulder, went panting by, fearful of being too late, or stopped to
ask which way his friends had taken, and being directed, hastened
on again like one refreshed. In this comparative solitude, which
seemed quite strange and novel after the late crowd, the widow had
for the first time an opportunity of inquiring of an old man who
came and sat beside them, what was the meaning of that great
assemblage.

'Why, where have you come from,' he returned, 'that you haven't
heard of Lord George Gordon's great association? This is the day
that he presents the petition against the Catholics, God bless
him!'

'What have all these men to do with that?' she said.

'What have they to do with it!' the old man replied. 'Why, how you
talk! Don't you know his lordship has declared he won't present it
to the house at all, unless it is attended to the door by forty
thousand good and true men at least? There's a crowd for you!'

'A crowd indeed!' said Barnaby. 'Do you hear that, mother!'

'And they're mustering yonder, as I am told,' resumed the old man,
'nigh upon a hundred thousand strong. Ah! Let Lord George alone.
He knows his power. There'll be a good many faces inside them
three windows over there,' and he pointed to where the House of
Commons overlooked the river, 'that'll turn pale when good Lord
George gets up this afternoon, and with reason too! Ay, ay. Let
his lordship alone. Let him alone. HE knows!' And so, with much
mumbling and chuckling and shaking of his forefinger, he rose, with
the assistance of his stick, and tottered off.

'Mother!' said Barnaby, 'that's a brave crowd he talks of. Come!'

'Not to join it!' cried his mother.

'Yes, yes,' he answered, plucking at her sleeve. 'Why not? Come!'

'You don't know,' she urged, 'what mischief they may do, where they
may lead you, what their meaning is. Dear Barnaby, for my sake--'

'For your sake!' he cried, patting her hand. 'Well! It IS for your
sake, mother. You remember what the blind man said, about the
gold. Here's a brave crowd! Come! Or wait till I come back--yes,
yes, wait here.'

She tried with all the earnestness her fears engendered, to turn
him from his purpose, but in vain. He was stooping down to buckle
on his shoe, when a hackney-coach passed them rather quickly, and a
voice inside called to the driver to stop.

'Young man,' said a voice within.

'Who's that?' cried Barnaby, looking up.

'Do you wear this ornament?' returned the stranger, holding out a
blue cockade.

'In Heaven's name, no. Pray do not give it him!' exclaimed the
widow.

'Speak for yourself, woman,' said the man within the coach, coldly.
'Leave the young man to his choice; he's old enough to make it, and
to snap your apron-strings. He knows, without your telling,
whether he wears the sign of a loyal Englishman or not.'

Barnaby, trembling with impatience, cried, 'Yes! yes, yes, I do,'
as he had cried a dozen times already. The man threw him a
cockade, and crying, 'Make haste to St George's Fields,' ordered
the coachman to drive on fast; and left them.

With hands that trembled with his eagerness to fix the bauble in
his hat, Barnaby was adjusting it as he best could, and hurriedly
replying to the tears and entreaties of his mother, when two
gentlemen passed on the opposite side of the way. Observing them,
and seeing how Barnaby was occupied, they stopped, whispered
together for an instant, turned back, and came over to them.

'Why are you sitting here?' said one of them, who was dressed in a
plain suit of black, wore long lank hair, and carried a great cane.
'Why have you not gone with the rest?'

'I am going, sir,' replied Barnaby, finishing his task, and putting
his hat on with an air of pride. 'I shall be there directly.'

'Say "my lord," young man, when his lordship does you the honour of
speaking to you,' said the second gentleman mildly. 'If you don't
know Lord George Gordon when you see him, it's high time you
should.'

'Nay, Gashford,' said Lord George, as Barnaby pulled off his hat
again and made him a low bow, 'it's no great matter on a day like
this, which every Englishman will remember with delight and pride.
Put on your hat, friend, and follow us, for you lag behind and are
late. It's past ten now. Didn't you know that the hour for
assembling was ten o'clock?'

Barnaby shook his head and looked vacantly from one to the other.

'You might have known it, friend,' said Gashford, 'it was perfectly
understood. How came you to be so ill informed?'

'He cannot tell you, sir,' the widow interposed. 'It's of no use
to ask him. We are but this morning come from a long distance in
the country, and know nothing of these matters.'

'The cause has taken a deep root, and has spread its branches far
and wide,' said Lord George to his secretary. 'This is a pleasant
hearing. I thank Heaven for it!'

'Amen!' cried Gashford with a solemn face.

'You do not understand me, my lord,' said the widow. 'Pardon me,
but you cruelly mistake my meaning. We know nothing of these
matters. We have no desire or right to join in what you are about
to do. This is my son, my poor afflicted son, dearer to me than my
own life. In mercy's name, my lord, go your way alone, and do not
tempt him into danger!'

'My good woman,' said Gashford, 'how can you!--Dear me!--What do
you mean by tempting, and by danger? Do you think his lordship is
a roaring lion, going about and seeking whom he may devour? God
bless me!'

'No, no, my lord, forgive me,' implored the widow, laying both her
hands upon his breast, and scarcely knowing what she did, or said,
in the earnestness of her supplication, 'but there are reasons why
you should hear my earnest, mother's prayer, and leave my son with
me. Oh do! He is not in his right senses, he is not, indeed!'

'It is a bad sign of the wickedness of these times,' said Lord
George, evading her touch, and colouring deeply, 'that those who
cling to the truth and support the right cause, are set down as
mad. Have you the heart to say this of your own son, unnatural
mother!'

'I am astonished at you!' said Gashford, with a kind of meek
severity. 'This is a very sad picture of female depravity.'

'He has surely no appearance,' said Lord George, glancing at
Barnaby, and whispering in his secretary's ear, 'of being deranged?
And even if he had, we must not construe any trifling peculiarity
into madness. Which of us'--and here he turned red again--'would
be safe, if that were made the law!'

'Not one,' replied the secretary; 'in that case, the greater the
zeal, the truth, and talent; the more direct the call from above;
the clearer would be the madness. With regard to this young man,
my lord,' he added, with a lip that slightly curled as he looked at
Barnaby, who stood twirling his hat, and stealthily beckoning them
to come away, 'he is as sensible and self-possessed as any one I
ever saw.'

'And you desire to make one of this great body?' said Lord George,
addressing him; 'and intended to make one, did you?'

'Yes--yes,' said Barnaby, with sparkling eyes. 'To be sure I did!
I told her so myself.'

'I see,' replied Lord George, with a reproachful glance at the
unhappy mother. 'I thought so. Follow me and this gentleman, and
you shall have your wish.'

Barnaby kissed his mother tenderly on the cheek, and bidding her be
of good cheer, for their fortunes were both made now, did as he was
desired. She, poor woman, followed too--with how much fear and
grief it would be hard to tell.

They passed quickly through the Bridge Road, where the shops were
all shut up (for the passage of the great crowd and the expectation
of their return had alarmed the tradesmen for their goods and
windows), and where, in the upper stories, all the inhabitants were
congregated, looking down into the street below, with faces
variously expressive of alarm, of interest, expectancy, and
indignation. Some of these applauded, and some hissed; but
regardless of these interruptions--for the noise of a vast
congregation of people at a little distance, sounded in his ears
like the roaring of the sea--Lord George Gordon quickened his pace,
and presently arrived before St George's Fields.

They were really fields at that time, and of considerable extent.
Here an immense multitude was collected, bearing flags of various
kinds and sizes, but all of the same colour--blue, like the
cockades--some sections marching to and fro in military array, and
others drawn up in circles, squares, and lines. A large portion,
both of the bodies which paraded the ground, and of those which
remained stationary, were occupied in singing hymns or psalms.
With whomsoever this originated, it was well done; for the sound of
so many thousand voices in the air must have stirred the heart of
any man within him, and could not fail to have a wonderful effect
upon enthusiasts, however mistaken.

Scouts had been posted in advance of the great body, to give notice
of their leader's coming. These falling back, the word was quickly
passed through the whole host, and for a short interval there
ensued a profound and deathlike silence, during which the mass was
so still and quiet, that the fluttering of a banner caught the eye,
and became a circumstance of note. Then they burst into a
tremendous shout, into another, and another; and the air seemed
rent and shaken, as if by the discharge of cannon.

'Gashford!' cried Lord George, pressing his secretary's arm tight
within his own, and speaking with as much emotion in his voice, as
in his altered face, 'I arn called indeed, now. I feel and know
it. I am the leader of a host. If they summoned me at this moment
with one voice to lead them on to death, I'd do it--Yes, and fall
first myself!'

'It is a proud sight,' said the secretary. 'It is a noble day for
England, and for the great cause throughout the world. Such
homage, my lord, as I, an humble but devoted man, can render--'

'What are you doing?' cried his master, catching him by both hands;
for he had made a show of kneeling at his feet. 'Do not unfit me,
dear Gashford, for the solemn duty of this glorious day--' the
tears stood in the eyes of the poor gentleman as he said the
words.--'Let us go among them; we have to find a place in some
division for this new recruit--give me your hand.'

Gashford slid his cold insidious palm into his master's grasp, and
so, hand in hand, and followed still by Barnaby and by his mother
too, they mingled with the concourse.

They had by this time taken to their singing again, and as their
leader passed between their ranks, they raised their voices to
their utmost. Many of those who were banded together to support
the religion of their country, even unto death, had never heard a
hymn or psalm in all their lives. But these fellows having for the
most part strong lungs, and being naturally fond of singing,
chanted any ribaldry or nonsense that occurred to them, feeling
pretty certain that it would not be detected in the general chorus,
and not caring much if it were. Many of these voluntaries were
sung under the very nose of Lord George Gordon, who, quite
unconscious of their burden, passed on with his usual stiff and
solemn deportment, very much edified and delighted by the pious
conduct of his followers.

So they went on and on, up this line, down that, round the exterior
of this circle, and on every side of that hollow square; and still
there were lines, and squares, and circles out of number to review.
The day being now intensely hot, and the sun striking down his
fiercest rays upon the field, those who carried heavy banners began
to grow faint and weary; most of the number assembled were fain to
pull off their neckcloths, and throw their coats and waistcoats
open; and some, towards the centre, quite overpowered by the
excessive heat, which was of course rendered more unendurable by
the multitude around them, lay down upon the grass, and offered all
they had about them for a drink of water. Still, no man left the
ground, not even of those who were so distressed; still Lord
George, streaming from every pore, went on with Gashford; and still
Barnaby and his mother followed close behind them.

They had arrived at the top of a long line of some eight hundred
men in single file, and Lord George had turned his head to look
back, when a loud cry of recognition--in that peculiar and half-
stifled tone which a voice has, when it is raised in the open air
and in the midst of a great concourse of persons--was heard, and a
man stepped with a shout of laughter from the rank, and smote
Barnaby on the shoulders with his heavy hand.

'How now!' he cried. 'Barnaby Rudge! Why, where have you been
hiding for these hundred years?'

Barnaby had been thinking within himself that the smell of the
trodden grass brought back his old days at cricket, when he was a
young boy and played on Chigwell Green. Confused by this sudden
and boisterous address, he stared in a bewildered manner at the
man, and could scarcely say 'What! Hugh!'

'Hugh!' echoed the other; 'ay, Hugh--Maypole Hugh! You remember my
dog? He's alive now, and will know you, I warrant. What, you wear
the colour, do you? Well done! Ha ha ha!'

'You know this young man, I see,' said Lord George.

'Know him, my lord! as well as I know my own right hand. My
captain knows him. We all know him.'

'Will you take him into your division?'

'It hasn't in it a better, nor a nimbler, nor a more active man,
than Barnaby Rudge,' said Hugh. 'Show me the man who says it has!
Fall in, Barnaby. He shall march, my lord, between me and Dennis;
and he shall carry,' he added, taking a flag from the hand of a
tired man who tendered it, 'the gayest silken streamer in this
valiant army.'

'In the name of God, no!' shrieked the widow, darting forward.
'Barnaby--my lord--see--he'll come back--Barnaby--Barnaby!'

'Women in the field!' cried Hugh, stepping between them, and
holding her off. 'Holloa! My captain there!'

'What's the matter here?' cried Simon Tappertit, bustling up in a
great heat. 'Do you call this order?'

'Nothing like it, captain,' answered Hugh, still holding her back
with his outstretched hand. 'It's against all orders. Ladies are
carrying off our gallant soldiers from their duty. The word of
command, captain! They're filing off the ground. Quick!'

'Close!' cried Simon, with the whole power of his lungs. 'Form!
March!'

She was thrown to the ground; the whole field was in motion;
Barnaby was whirled away into the heart of a dense mass of men, and
she saw him no more.

Chapter 49

The mob had been divided from its first assemblage into four
divisions; the London, the Westminster, the Southwark, and the
Scotch. Each of these divisions being subdivided into various
bodies, and these bodies being drawn up in various forms and
figures, the general arrangement was, except to the few chiefs and
leaders, as unintelligible as the plan of a great battle to the
meanest soldier in the field. It was not without its method,
however; for, in a very short space of time after being put in
motion, the crowd had resolved itself into three great parties, and
were prepared, as had been arranged, to cross the river by
different bridges, and make for the House of Commons in separate
detachments.

At the head of that division which had Westminster Bridge for its
approach to the scene of action, Lord George Gordon took his post;
with Gashford at his right hand, and sundry ruffians, of most
unpromising appearance, forming a kind of staff about him. The
conduct of a second party, whose route lay by Blackfriars, was
entrusted to a committee of management, including perhaps a dozen
men: while the third, which was to go by London Bridge, and through
the main streets, in order that their numbers and their serious
intentions might be the better known and appreciated by the
citizens, were led by Simon Tappertit (assisted by a few
subalterns, selected from the Brotherhood of United Bulldogs),
Dennis the hangman, Hugh, and some others.

The word of command being given, each of these great bodies took
the road assigned to it, and departed on its way, in perfect order
and profound silence. That which went through the City greatly
exceeded the others in number, and was of such prodigious extent
that when the rear began to move, the front was nearly four miles
in advance, notwithstanding that the men marched three abreast and
followed very close upon each other.

At the head of this party, in the place where Hugh, in the madness
of his humour, had stationed him, and walking between that
dangerous companion and the hangman, went Barnaby; as many a man
among the thousands who looked on that day afterwards remembered
well. Forgetful of all other things in the ecstasy of the moment,
his face flushed and his eyes sparkling with delight, heedless of
the weight of the great banner he carried, and mindful only of its
flashing in the sun and rustling in the summer breeze, on he went,
proud, happy, elated past all telling:--the only light-hearted,
undesigning creature, in the whole assembly.

'What do you think of this?' asked Hugh, as they passed through the
crowded streets, and looked up at the windows which were thronged
with spectators. 'They have all turned out to see our flags and
streamers? Eh, Barnaby? Why, Barnaby's the greatest man of all
the pack! His flag's the largest of the lot, the brightest too.
There's nothing in the show, like Barnaby. All eyes are turned on
him. Ha ha ha!'

'Don't make that din, brother,' growled the hangman, glancing with
no very approving eyes at Barnaby as he spoke: 'I hope he don't
think there's nothing to be done, but carrying that there piece of
blue rag, like a boy at a breaking up. You're ready for action I
hope, eh? You, I mean,' he added, nudging Barnaby roughly with
his elbow. 'What are you staring at? Why don't you speak?'

Barnaby had been gazing at his flag, and looked vacantly from his
questioner to Hugh.

'He don't understand your way,' said the latter. 'Here, I'll
explain it to him. Barnaby old boy, attend to me.'

'I'll attend,' said Barnaby, looking anxiously round; 'but I wish
I could see her somewhere.'

'See who?' demanded Dennis in a gruff tone. 'You an't in love I
hope, brother? That an't the sort of thing for us, you know. We
mustn't have no love here.'

'She would be proud indeed to see me now, eh Hugh?' said Barnaby.
'Wouldn't it make her glad to see me at the head of this large
show? She'd cry for joy, I know she would. Where CAN she be? She
never sees me at my best, and what do I care to be gay and fine if
SHE'S not by?'

'Why, what palaver's this?' asked Mr Dennis with supreme disdain.
'We an't got no sentimental members among us, I hope.'

'Don't be uneasy, brother,' cried Hugh, 'he's only talking of his
mother.'

'Of his what?' said Mr Dennis with a strong oath.

'His mother.'

'And have I combined myself with this here section, and turned out
on this here memorable day, to hear men talk about their mothers!'
growled Mr Dennis with extreme disgust. 'The notion of a man's
sweetheart's bad enough, but a man's mother!'--and here his disgust
was so extreme that he spat upon the ground, and could say no more.

'Barnaby's right,' cried Hugh with a grin, 'and I say it. Lookee,
bold lad. If she's not here to see, it's because I've provided for
her, and sent half-a-dozen gentlemen, every one of 'em with a
blue flag (but not half as fine as yours), to take her, in state,
to a grand house all hung round with gold and silver banners, and
everything else you please, where she'll wait till you come, and
want for nothing.'

'Ay!' said Barnaby, his face beaming with delight: 'have you
indeed? That's a good hearing. That's fine! Kind Hugh!'

'But nothing to what will come, bless you,' retorted Hugh, with a
wink at Dennis, who regarded his new companion in arms with great
astonishment.

'No, indeed?' cried Barnaby.

'Nothing at all,' said Hugh. 'Money, cocked hats and feathers, red
coats and gold lace; all the fine things there are, ever were, or
will be; will belong to us if we are true to that noble gentleman--
the best man in the world--carry our flags for a few days, and keep
'em safe. That's all we've got to do.'

'Is that all?' cried Barnaby with glistening eyes, as he clutched
his pole the tighter; 'I warrant you I keep this one safe, then.
You have put it in good hands. You know me, Hugh. Nobody shall
wrest this flag away.'

'Well said!' cried Hugh. 'Ha ha! Nobly said! That's the old
stout Barnaby, that I have climbed and leaped with, many and many a
day--I knew I was not mistaken in Barnaby.--Don't you see, man,' he
added in a whisper, as he slipped to the other side of Dennis,
'that the lad's a natural, and can be got to do anything, if you
take him the right way? Letting alone the fun he is, he's worth a
dozen men, in earnest, as you'd find if you tried a fall with him.
Leave him to me. You shall soon see whether he's of use or not.'

Mr Dennis received these explanatory remarks with many nods and
winks, and softened his behaviour towards Barnaby from that moment.
Hugh, laying his finger on his nose, stepped back into his former
place, and they proceeded in silence.

It was between two and three o'clock in the afternoon when the
three great parties met at Westminster, and, uniting into one huge
mass, raised a tremendous shout. This was not only done in token
of their presence, but as a signal to those on whom the task
devolved, that it was time to take possession of the lobbies of
both Houses, and of the various avenues of approach, and of the
gallery stairs. To the last-named place, Hugh and Dennis, still
with their pupil between them, rushed straightway; Barnaby having
given his flag into the hands of one of their own party, who kept
them at the outer door. Their followers pressing on behind, they
were borne as on a great wave to the very doors of the gallery,
whence it was impossible to retreat, even if they had been so
inclined, by reason of the throng which choked up the passages. It
is a familiar expression in describing a great crowd, that a person
might have walked upon the people's heads. In this case it was
actually done; for a boy who had by some means got among the
concourse, and was in imminent danger of suffocation, climbed to
the shoulders of a man beside him and walked upon the people's hats
and heads into the open street; traversing in his passage the whole
length of two staircases and a long gallery. Nor was the swarm
without less dense; for a basket which had been tossed into the
crowd, was jerked from head to head, and shoulder to shoulder, and
went spinning and whirling on above them, until it was lost to
view, without ever once falling in among them or coming near the
ground.

Through this vast throng, sprinkled doubtless here and there with
honest zealots, but composed for the most part of the very scum and
refuse of London, whose growth was fostered by bad criminal laws,
bad prison regulations, and the worst conceivable police, such of
the members of both Houses of Parliament as had not taken the
precaution to be already at their posts, were compelled to fight
and force their way. Their carriages were stopped and broken; the
wheels wrenched off; the glasses shivered to atoms; the panels
beaten in; drivers, footmen, and masters, pulled from their seats
and rolled in the mud. Lords, commoners, and reverend bishops,
with little distinction of person or party, were kicked and pinched
and hustled; passed from hand to hand through various stages of
ill-usage; and sent to their fellow-senators at last with their
clothes hanging in ribands about them, their bagwigs torn off,
themselves speechless and breathless, and their persons covered
with the powder which had been cuffed and beaten out of their hair.
One lord was so long in the hands of the populace, that the Peers
as a body resolved to sally forth and rescue him, and were in the
act of doing so, when he happily appeared among them covered with
dirt and bruises, and hardly to be recognised by those who knew him
best. The noise and uproar were on the increase every moment. The
air was filled with execrations, hoots, and howlings. The mob
raged and roared, like a mad monster as it was, unceasingly, and
each new outrage served to swell its fury.

Within doors, matters were even yet more threatening. Lord George--
preceded by a man who carried the immense petition on a porter's
knot through the lobby to the door of the House of Commons, where
it was received by two officers of the house who rolled it up to
the table ready for presentation--had taken his seat at an early
hour, before the Speaker went to prayers. His followers pouring in
at the same time, the lobby and all the avenues were immediately
filled, as we have seen. Thus the members were not only attacked
in their passage through the streets, but were set upon within the
very walls of Parliament; while the tumult, both within and
without, was so great, that those who attempted to speak could
scarcely hear their own voices: far less, consult upon the course
it would be wise to take in such extremity, or animate each other
to dignified and firm resistance. So sure as any member, just
arrived, with dress disordered and dishevelled hair, came
struggling through the crowd in the lobby, it yelled and screamed
in triumph; and when the door of the House, partially and
cautiously opened by those within for his admission, gave them a
momentary glimpse of the interior, they grew more wild and savage,
like beasts at the sight of prey, and made a rush against the
portal which strained its locks and bolts in their staples, and
shook the very beams.

The strangers' gallery, which was immediately above the door of the
House, had been ordered to be closed on the first rumour of
disturbance, and was empty; save that now and then Lord George took
his seat there, for the convenience of coming to the head of the
stairs which led to it, and repeating to the people what had passed
within. It was on these stairs that Barnaby, Hugh, and Dennis were
posted. There were two flights, short, steep, and narrow, running
parallel to each other, and leading to two little doors
communicating with a low passage which opened on the gallery.
Between them was a kind of well, or unglazed skylight, for the
admission of light and air into the lobby, which might be some
eighteen or twenty feet below.

Upon one of these little staircases--not that at the head of which
Lord George appeared from time to time, but the other--Gashford
stood with his elbow on the bannister, and his cheek resting on his
hand, with his usual crafty aspect. Whenever he varied this
attitude in the slightest degree--so much as by the gentlest motion
of his arm--the uproar was certain to increase, not merely there,
but in the lobby below; from which place no doubt, some man who
acted as fugleman to the rest, was constantly looking up and
watching him.

'Order!' cried Hugh, in a voice which made itself heard even above
the roar and tumult, as Lord George appeared at the top of the
staircase. 'News! News from my lord!'

The noise continued, notwithstanding his appearance, until Gashford
looked round. There was silence immediately--even among the people
in the passages without, and on the other staircases, who could
neither see nor hear, but to whom, notwithstanding, the signal was
conveyed with marvellous rapidity.

'Gentlemen,' said Lord George, who was very pale and agitated, we
must be firm. They talk of delays, but we must have no delays.
They talk of taking your petition into consideration next Tuesday,
but we must have it considered now. Present appearances look bad
for our success, but we must succeed and will!'

'We must succeed and will!' echoed the crowd. And so among their
shouts and cheers and other cries, he bowed to them and retired,
and presently came back again. There was another gesture from
Gashford, and a dead silence directly.

'I am afraid,' he said, this time, 'that we have little reason,
gentlemen, to hope for any redress from the proceedings of
Parliament. But we must redress our own grievances, we must meet
again, we must put our trust in Providence, and it will bless our
endeavours.'

This speech being a little more temperate than the last, was not so
favourably received. When the noise and exasperation were at their
height, he came back once more, and told them that the alarm had
gone forth for many miles round; that when the King heard of their
assembling together in that great body, he had no doubt, His
Majesty would send down private orders to have their wishes
complied with; and--with the manner of his speech as childish,
irresolute, and uncertain as his matter--was proceeding in this
strain, when two gentlemen suddenly appeared at the door where he
stood, and pressing past him and coming a step or two lower down
upon the stairs, confronted the people.

The boldness of this action quite took them by surprise. They were
not the less disconcerted, when one of the gentlemen, turning to
Lord George, spoke thus--in a loud voice that they might hear him
well, but quite coolly and collectedly:

'You may tell these people, if you please, my lord, that I am
General Conway of whom they have heard; and that I oppose this
petition, and all their proceedings, and yours. I am a soldier,
you may tell them, and I will protect the freedom of this place
with my sword. You see, my lord, that the members of this House
are all in arms to-day; you know that the entrance to it is a
narrow one; you cannot be ignorant that there are men within these
walls who are determined to defend that pass to the last, and
before whom many lives must fall if your adherents persevere. Have
a care what you do.'

'And my Lord George,' said the other gentleman, addressing him in
like manner, 'I desire them to hear this, from me--Colonel Gordon--
your near relation. If a man among this crowd, whose uproar
strikes us deaf, crosses the threshold of the House of Commons, I
swear to run my sword that moment--not into his, but into your
body!'

With that, they stepped back again, keeping their faces towards the
crowd; took each an arm of the misguided nobleman; drew him into
the passage, and shut the door; which they directly locked and
fastened on the inside.

This was so quickly done, and the demeanour of both gentlemen--who
were not young men either--was so gallant and resolute, that the
crowd faltered and stared at each other with irresolute and timid
looks. Many tried to turn towards the door; some of the faintest-
hearted cried they had best go back, and called to those behind to
give way; and the panic and confusion were increasing rapidly, when
Gashford whispered Hugh.

'What now!' Hugh roared aloud, turning towards them. 'Why go back?
Where can you do better than here, boys! One good rush against
these doors and one below at the same time, will do the business.
Rush on, then! As to the door below, let those stand back who are
afraid. Let those who are not afraid, try who shall be the first
to pass it. Here goes! Look out down there!'

Without the delay of an instant, he threw himself headlong over the
bannisters into the lobby below. He had hardly touched the ground
when Barnaby was at his side. The chaplain's assistant, and some
members who were imploring the people to retire, immediately
withdrew; and then, with a great shout, both crowds threw
themselves against the doors pell-mell, and besieged the House in
earnest.

At that moment, when a second onset must have brought them into
collision with those who stood on the defensive within, in which
case great loss of life and bloodshed would inevitably have
ensued,--the hindmost portion of the crowd gave way, and the rumour
spread from mouth to mouth that a messenger had been despatched by
water for the military, who were forming in the street. Fearful of
sustaining a charge in the narrow passages in which they were so
closely wedged together, the throng poured out as impetuously as
they had flocked in. As the whole stream turned at once, Barnaby
and Hugh went with it: and so, fighting and struggling and
trampling on fallen men and being trampled on in turn themselves,
they and the whole mass floated by degrees into the open street,
where a large detachment of the Guards, both horse and foot, came
hurrying up; clearing the ground before them so rapidly that the
people seemed to melt away as they advanced.

The word of command to halt being given, the soldiers formed across
the street; the rioters, breathless and exhausted with their late
exertions, formed likewise, though in a very irregular and
disorderly manner. The commanding officer rode hastily into the
open space between the two bodies, accompanied by a magistrate and
an officer of the House of Commons, for whose accommodation a
couple of troopers had hastily dismounted. The Riot Act was read,
but not a man stirred.

In the first rank of the insurgents, Barnaby and Hugh stood side by
side. Somebody had thrust into Barnaby's hands when he came out
into the street, his precious flag; which, being now rolled up and
tied round the pole, looked like a giant quarter-staff as he
grasped it firmly and stood upon his guard. If ever man believed
with his whole heart and soul that he was engaged in a just cause,
and that he was bound to stand by his leader to the last, poor
Barnaby believed it of himself and Lord George Gordon.

After an ineffectual attempt to make himself heard, the magistrate
gave the word and the Horse Guards came riding in among the crowd.
But, even then, he galloped here and there, exhorting the people to
disperse; and, although heavy stones were thrown at the men, and
some were desperately cut and bruised, they had no orders but to
make prisoners of such of the rioters as were the most active, and
to drive the people back with the flat of their sabres. As the
horses came in among them, the throng gave way at many points, and
the Guards, following up their advantage, were rapidly clearing the
ground, when two or three of the foremost, who were in a manner cut
off from the rest by the people closing round them, made straight
towards Barnaby and Hugh, who had no doubt been pointed out as the
two men who dropped into the lobby: laying about them now with some
effect, and inflicting on the more turbulent of their opponents, a
few slight flesh wounds, under the influence of which a man
dropped, here and there, into the arms of his fellows, amid much
groaning and confusion.

At the sight of gashed and bloody faces, seen for a moment in the
crowd, then hidden by the press around them, Barnaby turned pale
and sick. But he stood his ground, and grasping his pole more
firmly yet, kept his eye fixed upon the nearest soldier--nodding
his head meanwhile, as Hugh, with a scowling visage, whispered in
his ear.

The soldier came spurring on, making his horse rear as the people
pressed about him, cutting at the hands of those who would have
grasped his rein and forced his charger back, and waving to his
comrades to follow--and still Barnaby, without retreating an inch,
waited for his coming. Some called to him to fly, and some were in
the very act of closing round him, to prevent his being taken, when
the pole swept into the air above the people's heads, and the man's
saddle was empty in an instant.

Then, he and Hugh turned and fled, the crowd opening to let them
pass, and closing up again so quickly that there was no clue to the
course they had taken. Panting for breath, hot, dusty, and
exhausted with fatigue, they reached the riverside in safety, and
getting into a boat with all despatch were soon out of any
immediate danger.

As they glided down the river, they plainly heard the people
cheering; and supposing they might have forced the soldiers to
retreat, lay upon their oars for a few minutes, uncertain whether
to return or not. But the crowd passing along Westminster Bridge,
soon assured them that the populace were dispersing; and Hugh
rightly guessed from this, that they had cheered the magistrate for
offering to dismiss the military on condition of their immediate
departure to their several homes, and that he and Barnaby were
better where they were. He advised, therefore, that they should
proceed to Blackfriars, and, going ashore at the bridge, make the
best of their way to The Boot; where there was not only good
entertainment and safe lodging, but where they would certainly be
joined by many of their late companions. Barnaby assenting, they
decided on this course of action, and pulled for Blackfriars
accordingly.

They landed at a critical time, and fortunately for themselves at
the right moment. For, coming into Fleet Street, they found it in
an unusual stir; and inquiring the cause, were told that a body of
Horse Guards had just galloped past, and that they were escorting
some rioters whom they had made prisoners, to Newgate for safety.
Not at all ill-pleased to have so narrowly escaped the cavalcade,
they lost no more time in asking questions, but hurried to The Boot
with as much speed as Hugh considered it prudent to make, without
appearing singular or attracting an inconvenient share of public
notice.

Chapter 50

They were among the first to reach the tavern, but they had not
been there many minutes, when several groups of men who had formed
part of the crowd, came straggling in. Among them were Simon
Tappertit and Mr Dennis; both of whom, but especially the latter,
greeted Barnaby with the utmost warmth, and paid him many
compliments on the prowess he had shown.

'Which,' said Dennis, with an oath, as he rested his bludgeon in a
corner with his hat upon it, and took his seat at the same table
with them, 'it does me good to think of. There was a opportunity!
But it led to nothing. For my part, I don't know what would.
There's no spirit among the people in these here times. Bring
something to eat and drink here. I'm disgusted with humanity.'

'On what account?' asked Mr Tappertit, who had been quenching his
fiery face in a half-gallon can. 'Don't you consider this a good
beginning, mister?'

'Give me security that it an't a ending,' rejoined the hangman.
'When that soldier went down, we might have made London ours; but
no;--we stand, and gape, and look on--the justice (I wish he had
had a bullet in each eye, as he would have had, if we'd gone to
work my way) says, "My lads, if you'll give me your word to
disperse, I'll order off the military," our people sets up a
hurrah, throws up the game with the winning cards in their hands,
and skulks away like a pack of tame curs as they are. Ah,' said
the hangman, in a tone of deep disgust, 'it makes me blush for my
feller creeturs. I wish I had been born a ox, I do!'

'You'd have been quite as agreeable a character if you had been, I
think,' returned Simon Tappertit, going out in a lofty manner.

'Don't be too sure of that,' rejoined the hangman, calling after
him; 'if I was a horned animal at the present moment, with the
smallest grain of sense, I'd toss every man in this company,
excepting them two,' meaning Hugh and Barnaby, 'for his manner of
conducting himself this day.'

With which mournful review of their proceedings, Mr Dennis sought
consolation in cold boiled beef and beer; but without at all
relaxing the grim and dissatisfied expression of his face, the
gloom of which was rather deepened than dissipated by their
grateful influence.

The company who were thus libelled might have retaliated by strong
words, if not by blows, but they were dispirited and worn out. The
greater part of them had fasted since morning; all had suffered
extremely from the excessive heat; and between the day's shouting,
exertion, and excitement, many had quite lost their voices, and so
much of their strength that they could hardly stand. Then they
were uncertain what to do next, fearful of the consequences of what
they had done already, and sensible that after all they had carried
no point, but had indeed left matters worse than they had found
them. Of those who had come to The Boot, many dropped off within
an hour; such of them as were really honest and sincere, never,
after the morning's experience, to return, or to hold any
communication with their late companions. Others remained but to
refresh themselves, and then went home desponding; others who had
theretofore been regular in their attendance, avoided the place
altogether. The half-dozen prisoners whom the Guards had taken,
were magnified by report into half-a-hundred at least; and their
friends, being faint and sober, so slackened in their energy, and
so drooped beneath these dispiriting influences, that by eight
o'clock in the evening, Dennis, Hugh, and Barnaby, were left alone.
Even they were fast asleep upon the benches, when Gashford's
entrance roused them.

'Oh! you ARE here then?' said the Secretary. 'Dear me!'

'Why, where should we be, Muster Gashford!' Dennis rejoined as he
rose into a sitting posture.

'Oh nowhere, nowhere,' he returned with excessive mildness. 'The
streets are filled with blue cockades. I rather thought you might
have been among them. I am glad you are not.'

'You have orders for us, master, then?' said Hugh.

'Oh dear, no. Not I. No orders, my good fellow. What orders
should I have? You are not in my service.'

'Muster Gashford,' remonstrated Dennis, 'we belong to the cause,
don't we?'

'The cause!' repeated the secretary, looking at him in a sort of
abstraction. 'There is no cause. The cause is lost.'

'Lost!'

'Oh yes. You have heard, I suppose? The petition is rejected by a
hundred and ninety-two, to six. It's quite final. We might have
spared ourselves some trouble. That, and my lord's vexation, are
the only circumstances I regret. I am quite satisfied in all other
respects.'

As he said this, he took a penknife from his pocket, and putting
his hat upon his knee, began to busy himself in ripping off the
blue cockade which he had worn all day; at the same time humming a
psalm tune which had been very popular in the morning, and dwelling
on it with a gentle regret.

His two adherents looked at each other, and at him, as if they
were at a loss how to pursue the subject. At length Hugh, after
some elbowing and winking between himself and Mr Dennis, ventured
to stay his hand, and to ask him why he meddled with that riband in
his hat.

'Because,' said the secretary, looking up with something between a
snarl and a smile; 'because to sit still and wear it, or to fall
asleep and wear it, is a mockery. That's all, friend.'

'What would you have us do, master!' cried Hugh.

'Nothing,' returned Gashford, shrugging his shoulders, 'nothing.
When my lord was reproached and threatened for standing by you, I,
as a prudent man, would have had you do nothing. When the soldiers
were trampling you under their horses' feet, I would have had you
do nothing. When one of them was struck down by a daring hand, and
I saw confusion and dismay in all their faces, I would have had you
do nothing--just what you did, in short. This is the young man who
had so little prudence and so much boldness. Ah! I am sorry for him.'

'Sorry, master!' cried Hugh.

'Sorry, Muster Gashford!' echoed Dennis.

'In case there should be a proclamation out to-morrow, offering
five hundred pounds, or some such trifle, for his apprehension; and
in case it should include another man who dropped into the lobby
from the stairs above,' said Gashford, coldly; 'still, do nothing.'

'Fire and fury, master!' cried Hugh, starting up. 'What have we
done, that you should talk to us like this!'

'Nothing,' returned Gashford with a sneer. 'If you are cast into
prison; if the young man--' here he looked hard at Barnaby's
attentive face--'is dragged from us and from his friends; perhaps
from people whom he loves, and whom his death would kill; is thrown
into jail, brought out and hanged before their eyes; still, do
nothing. You'll find it your best policy, I have no doubt.'

'Come on!' cried Hugh, striding towards the door. 'Dennis--
Barnaby--come on!'

'Where? To do what?' said Gashford, slipping past him, and
standing with his back against it.

'Anywhere! Anything!' cried Hugh. 'Stand aside, master, or the
window will serve our turn as well. Let us out!'

'Ha ha ha! You are of such--of such an impetuous nature,' said
Gashford, changing his manner for one of the utmost good fellowship
and the pleasantest raillery; 'you are such an excitable creature--
but you'll drink with me before you go?'

'Oh, yes--certainly,' growled Dennis, drawing his sleeve across his
thirsty lips. 'No malice, brother. Drink with Muster Gashford!'

Hugh wiped his heated brow, and relaxed into a smile. The artful
secretary laughed outright.

'Some liquor here! Be quick, or he'll not stop, even for that. He
is a man of such desperate ardour!' said the smooth secretary, whom
Mr Dennis corroborated with sundry nods and muttered oaths--'Once
roused, he is a fellow of such fierce determination!'

Hugh poised his sturdy arm aloft, and clapping Barnaby on the back,
bade him fear nothing. They shook hands together--poor Barnaby
evidently possessed with the idea that he was among the most
virtuous and disinterested heroes in the world--and Gashford
laughed again.

'I hear,' he said smoothly, as he stood among them with a great
measure of liquor in his hand, and filled their glasses as quickly
and as often as they chose, 'I hear--but I cannot say whether it be
true or false--that the men who are loitering in the streets to-
night are half disposed to pull down a Romish chapel or two, and
that they only want leaders. I even heard mention of those in Duke
Street, Lincoln's Inn Fields, and in Warwick Street, Golden
Square; but common report, you know--You are not going?'

--'To do nothing, rnaster, eh?' cried Hugh. 'No jails and halter
for Barnaby and me. They must be frightened out of that. Leaders
are wanted, are they? Now boys!'

'A most impetuous fellow!' cried the secretary. 'Ha ha! A
courageous, boisterous, most vehement fellow! A man who--'

There was no need to finish the sentence, for they had rushed out
of the house, and were far beyond hearing. He stopped in the
middle of a laugh, listened, drew on his gloves, and, clasping his
hands behind him, paced the deserted room for a long time, then
bent his steps towards the busy town, and walked into the streets.

They were filled with people, for the rumour of that day's
proceedings had made a great noise. Those persons who did not care
to leave home, were at their doors or windows, and one topic of
discourse prevailed on every side. Some reported that the riots
were effectually put down; others that they had broken out again:
some said that Lord George Gordon had been sent under a strong
guard to the Tower; others that an attempt had been made upon the
King's life, that the soldiers had been again called out, and that
the noise of musketry in a distant part of the town had been
plainly heard within an hour. As it grew darker, these stories
became more direful and mysterious; and often, when some
frightened passenger ran past with tidings that the rioters were
not far off, and were coming up, the doors were shut and barred,
lower windows made secure, and as much consternation engendered, as
if the city were invaded by a foreign army.

Gashford walked stealthily about, listening to all he heard, and
diffusing or confirming, whenever he had an opportunity, such false
intelligence as suited his own purpose; and, busily occupied in
this way, turned into Holborn for the twentieth time, when a great
many women and children came flying along the street--often panting
and looking back--and the confused murmur of numerous voices struck
upon his ear. Assured by these tokens, and by the red light which
began to flash upon the houses on either side, that some of his
friends were indeed approaching, he begged a moment's shelter at a
door which opened as he passed, and running with some other
persons to an upper window, looked out upon the crowd.

They had torches among them, and the chief faces were distinctly
visible. That they had been engaged in the destruction of some
building was sufficiently apparent, and that it was a Catholic
place of worship was evident from the spoils they bore as trophies,
which were easily recognisable for the vestments of priests, and
rich fragments of altar furniture. Covered with soot, and dirt,
and dust, and lime; their garments torn to rags; their hair hanging
wildly about them; their hands and faces jagged and bleeding with
the wounds of rusty nails; Barnaby, Hugh, and Dennis hurried on
before them all, like hideous madmen. After them, the dense throng
came fighting on: some singing; some shouting in triumph; some
quarrelling among themselves; some menacing the spectators as they
passed; some with great wooden fragments, on which they spent their
rage as if they had been alive, rending them limb from limb, and
hurling the scattered morsels high into the air; some in a drunken
state, unconscious of the hurts they had received from falling
bricks, and stones, and beams; one borne upon a shutter, in the
very midst, covered with a dingy cloth, a senseless, ghastly heap.
Thus--a vision of coarse faces, with here and there a blot of
flaring, smoky light; a dream of demon heads and savage eyes, and
sticks and iron bars uplifted in the air, and whirled about; a
bewildering horror, in which so much was seen, and yet so little,
which seemed so long, and yet so short, in which there were so many
phantoms, not to be forgotten all through life, and yet so many
things that could not be observed in one distracting glimpse--it
flitted onward, and was gone.

As it passed away upon its work of wrath and ruin, a piercing
scream was heard. A knot of persons ran towards the spot;
Gashford, who just then emerged into the street, among them. He
was on the outskirts of the little concourse, and could not see or
hear what passed within; but one who had a better place, informed
him that a widow woman had descried her son among the rioters.

'Is that all?' said the secretary, turning his face homewards.
'Well! I think this looks a little more like business!'

Chapter 51

Promising as these outrages were to Gashford's view, and much like
business as they looked, they extended that night no farther. The
soldiers were again called out, again they took half-a-dozen
prisoners, and again the crowd dispersed after a short and
bloodless scuffle. Hot and drunken though they were, they had not
yet broken all bounds and set all law and government at defiance.
Something of their habitual deference to the authority erected by
society for its own preservation yet remained among them, and had
its majesty been vindicated in time, the secretary would have had
to digest a bitter disappointment.

By midnight, the streets were clear and quiet, and, save that there
stood in two parts of the town a heap of nodding walls and pile of
rubbish, where there had been at sunset a rich and handsome
building, everything wore its usual aspect. Even the Catholic
gentry and tradesmen, of whom there were many resident in different
parts of the City and its suburbs, had no fear for their lives or
property, and but little indignation for the wrong they had already
sustained in the plunder and destruction of their temples of
worship. An honest confidence in the government under whose
protection they had lived for many years, and a well-founded
reliance on the good feeling and right thinking of the great mass
of the community, with whom, notwithstanding their religious
differences, they were every day in habits of confidential,
affectionate, and friendly intercourse, reassured them, even under
the excesses that had been committed; and convinced them that they
who were Protestants in anything but the name, were no more to be
considered as abettors of these disgraceful occurrences, than they
themselves were chargeable with the uses of the block, the rack,
the gibbet, and the stake in cruel Mary's reign.

The clock was on the stroke of one, when Gabriel Varden, with his
lady and Miss Miggs, sat waiting in the little parlour. This fact;
the toppling wicks of the dull, wasted candles; the silence that
prevailed; and, above all, the nightcaps of both maid and matron,
were sufficient evidence that they had been prepared for bed some
time ago, and had some reason for sitting up so far beyond their
usual hour.

If any other corroborative testimony had been required, it would
have been abundantly furnished in the actions of Miss Miggs, who,
having arrived at that restless state and sensitive condition of
the nervous system which are the result of long watching, did, by a
constant rubbing and tweaking of her nose, a perpetual change of
position (arising from the sudden growth of imaginary knots and
knobs in her chair), a frequent friction of her eyebrows, the
incessant recurrence of a small cough, a small groan, a gasp, a
sigh, a sniff, a spasmodic start, and by other demonstrations of
that nature, so file down and rasp, as it were, the patience of the
locksmith, that after looking at her in silence for some time, he
at last broke out into this apostrophe:--

'Miggs, my good girl, go to bed--do go to bed. You're really worse
than the dripping of a hundred water-butts outside the window, or
the scratching of as many mice behind the wainscot. I can't bear
it. Do go to bed, Miggs. To oblige me--do.'

'You haven't got nothing to untie, sir,' returned Miss Miggs, 'and
therefore your requests does not surprise me. But missis has--and
while you sit up, mim'--she added, turning to the locksmith's wife,
'I couldn't, no, not if twenty times the quantity of cold water was
aperiently running down my back at this moment, go to bed with a
quiet spirit.'

Having spoken these words, Miss Miggs made divers efforts to rub
her shoulders in an impossible place, and shivered from head to
foot; thereby giving the beholders to understand that the imaginary
cascade was still in full flow, but that a sense of duty upheld her
under that and all other sufferings, and nerved her to endurance.

Mrs Varden being too sleepy to speak, and Miss Miggs having, as the
phrase is, said her say, the locksmith had nothing for it but to
sigh and be as quiet as he could.

But to be quiet with such a basilisk before him was impossible.
If he looked another way, it was worse to feel that she was rubbing
her cheek, or twitching her ear, or winking her eye, or making all
kinds of extraordinary shapes with her nose, than to see her do it.
If she was for a moment free from any of these complaints, it was
only because of her foot being asleep, or of her arm having got the
fidgets, or of her leg being doubled up with the cramp, or of some
other horrible disorder which racked her whole frame. If she did
enjoy a moment's ease, then with her eyes shut and her mouth wide
open, she would be seen to sit very stiff and upright in her chair;
then to nod a little way forward, and stop with a jerk; then to nod
a little farther forward, and stop with another jerk; then to
recover herself; then to come forward again--lower--lower--lower--
by very slow degrees, until, just as it seemed impossible that she
could preserve her balance for another instant, and the locksmith
was about to call out in an agony, to save her from dashing down
upon her forehead and fracturing her skull, then all of a sudden
and without the smallest notice, she would come upright and rigid
again with her eyes open, and in her countenance an expression of
defiance, sleepy but yet most obstinate, which plainly said, 'I've
never once closed 'em since I looked at you last, and I'll take my
oath of it!'

At length, after the clock had struck two, there was a sound at the
street door, as if somebody had fallen against the knocker by
accident. Miss Miggs immediately jumping up and clapping her
hands, cried with a drowsy mingling of the sacred and profane,
'Ally Looyer, mim! there's Simmuns's knock!'

'Who's there?' said Gabriel.

'Me!' cried the well-known voice of Mr Tappertit. Gabriel opened
the door, and gave him admission.

He did not cut a very insinuating figure, for a man of his stature
suffers in a crowd; and having been active in yesterday morning's
work, his dress was literally crushed from head to foot: his hat
being beaten out of all shape, and his shoes trodden down at heel
like slippers. His coat fluttered in strips about him, the buckles
were torn away both from his knees and feet, half his neckerchief
was gone, and the bosom of his shirt was rent to tatters. Yet
notwithstanding all these personal disadvantages; despite his being
very weak from heat and fatigue; and so begrimed with mud and dust
that he might have been in a case, for anything of the real texture
(either of his skin or apparel) that the eye could discern; he
stalked haughtily into the parlour, and throwing himself into a
chair, and endeavouring to thrust his hands into the pockets of his
small-clothes, which were turned inside out and displayed upon his
legs, like tassels, surveyed the household with a gloomy dignity.

'Simon,' said the locksmith gravely, 'how comes it that you return
home at this time of night, and in this condition? Give me an
assurance that you have not been among the rioters, and I am
satisfied.'

'Sir,' replied Mr Tappertit, with a contemptuous look, 'I wonder at
YOUR assurance in making such demands.'

'You have been drinking,' said the locksmith.

'As a general principle, and in the most offensive sense of the
words, sir,' returned his journeyman with great self-possession,
'I consider you a liar. In that last observation you have
unintentionally--unintentionally, sir,--struck upon the truth.'

'Martha,' said the locksmith, turning to his wife, and shaking his
head sorrowfully, while a smile at the absurd figure beside him
still played upon his open face, 'I trust it may turn out that this
poor lad is not the victim of the knaves and fools we have so often
had words about, and who have done so much harm to-day. If he has
been at Warwick Street or Duke Street to-night--'

'He has been at neither, sir,' cried Mr Tappertit in a loud voice,
which he suddenly dropped into a whisper as he repeated, with eyes
fixed upon the locksmith, 'he has been at neither.'

'I am glad of it, with all my heart,' said the locksmith in a
serious tone; 'for if he had been, and it could be proved against
him, Martha, your Great Association would have been to him the cart
that draws men to the gallows and leaves them hanging in the air.
It would, as sure as we're alive!'

Mrs Varden was too much scared by Simon's altered manner and
appearance, and by the accounts of the rioters which had reached
her ears that night, to offer any retort, or to have recourse to
her usual matrimonial policy. Miss Miggs wrung her hands, and
wept.

'He was not at Duke Street, or at Warwick Street, G. Varden,' said
Simon, sternly; 'but he WAS at Westminster. Perhaps, sir, he
kicked a county member, perhaps, sir, he tapped a lord--you may
stare, sir, I repeat it--blood flowed from noses, and perhaps he
tapped a lord. Who knows? This,' he added, putting his hand into
his waistcoat-pocket, and taking out a large tooth, at the sight of
which both Miggs and Mrs Varden screamed, 'this was a bishop's.
Beware, G. Varden!'

'Now, I would rather,' said the locksmith hastily, 'have paid five
hundred pounds, than had this come to pass. You idiot, do you know
what peril you stand in?'

'I know it, sir,' replied his journeyman, 'and it is my glory. I
was there, everybody saw me there. I was conspicuous, and
prominent. I will abide the consequences.'

The locksmith, really disturbed and agitated, paced to and fro in
silence--glancing at his former 'prentice every now and then--and
at length stopping before him, said:

'Get to bed, and sleep for a couple of hours that you may wake
penitent, and with some of your senses about you. Be sorry for
what you have done, and we will try to save you. If I call him by
five o'clock,' said Varden, turning hurriedly to his wife, and he
washes himself clean and changes his dress, he may get to the Tower
Stairs, and away by the Gravesend tide-boat, before any search is
made for him. From there he can easily get on to Canterbury,
where your cousin will give him work till this storm has blown
over. I am not sure that I do right in screening him from the
punishment he deserves, but he has lived in this house, man and
boy, for a dozen years, and I should be sorry if for this one day's
work he made a miserable end. Lock the front-door, Miggs, and show
no light towards the street when you go upstairs. Quick, Simon!
Get to bed!'

'And do you suppose, sir,' retorted Mr Tappertit, with a thickness
and slowness of speech which contrasted forcibly with the rapidity
and earnestness of his kind-hearted master--'and do you suppose,
sir, that I am base and mean enough to accept your servile
proposition?--Miscreant!'

'Whatever you please, Sim, but get to bed. Every minute is of
consequence. The light here, Miggs!'

'Yes yes, oh do! Go to bed directly,' cried the two women
together.

Mr Tappertit stood upon his feet, and pushing his chair away to
show that he needed no assistance, answered, swaying himself to and
fro, and managing his head as if it had no connection whatever with
his body:

'You spoke of Miggs, sir--Miggs may be smothered!'

'Oh Simmun!' ejaculated that young lady in a faint voice. 'Oh mim!
Oh sir! Oh goodness gracious, what a turn he has give me!'

'This family may ALL be smothered, sir,' returned Mr Tappertit,
after glancing at her with a smile of ineffable disdain, 'excepting
Mrs V. I have come here, sir, for her sake, this night. Mrs
Varden, take this piece of paper. It's a protection, ma'am. You
may need it.'

With these words he held out at arm's length, a dirty, crumpled
scrap of writing. The locksmith took it from him, opened it, and
read as follows:

'All good friends to our cause, I hope will be particular, and do
no injury to the property of any true Protestant. I am well
assured that the proprietor of this house is a staunch and worthy
friend to the cause.

GEORGE GORDON.'

'What's this!' said the locksmith, with an altered face.

'Something that'll do you good service, young feller,' replied his
journeyman, 'as you'll find. Keep that safe, and where you can
lay your hand upon it in an instant. And chalk "No Popery" on your
door to-morrow night, and for a week to come--that's all.'

'This is a genuine document,' said the locksmith, 'I know, for I
have seen the hand before. What threat does it imply? What devil
is abroad?'

'A fiery devil,' retorted Sim; 'a flaming, furious devil. Don't
you put yourself in its way, or you're done for, my buck. Be
warned in time, G. Varden. Farewell!'

But here the two women threw themselves in his way--especially Miss
Miggs, who fell upon him with such fervour that she pinned him
against the wall--and conjured him in moving words not to go forth
till he was sober; to listen to reason; to think of it; to take
some rest, and then determine.

'I tell you,' said Mr Tappertit, 'that my mind is made up. My
bleeding country calls me and I go! Miggs, if you don't get out of
the way, I'll pinch you.'

Miss Miggs, still clinging to the rebel, screamed once
vociferously--but whether in the distraction of her mind, or
because of his having executed his threat, is uncertain.

'Release me,' said Simon, struggling to free himself from her
chaste, but spider-like embrace. 'Let me go! I have made
arrangements for you in an altered state of society, and mean to
provide for you comfortably in life--there! Will that satisfy
you?'

'Oh Simmun!' cried Miss Miggs. 'Oh my blessed Simmun! Oh mim!
what are my feelings at this conflicting moment!'

Of a rather turbulent description, it would seem; for her nightcap
had been knocked off in the scuffle, and she was on her knees upon
the floor, making a strange revelation of blue and yellow curl-
papers, straggling locks of hair, tags of staylaces, and strings of
it's impossible to say what; panting for breath, clasping her
hands, turning her eyes upwards, shedding abundance of tears, and
exhibiting various other symptoms of the acutest mental suffering.

'I leave,' said Simon, turning to his master, with an utter
disregard of Miggs's maidenly affliction, 'a box of things
upstairs. Do what you like with 'em. I don't want 'em. I'm never
coming back here, any more. Provide yourself, sir, with a
journeyman; I'm my country's journeyman; henceforward that's MY
line of business.'

'Be what you like in two hours' time, but now go up to bed,'
returned the locksmith, planting himself in the doorway. 'Do you
hear me? Go to bed!'

'I hear you, and defy you, Varden,' rejoined Simon Tappertit.
'This night, sir, I have been in the country, planning an
expedition which shall fill your bell-hanging soul with wonder and
dismay. The plot demands my utmost energy. Let me pass!'

'I'll knock you down if you come near the door,' replied the
locksmith. 'You had better go to bed!'

Simon made no answer, but gathering himself up as straight as he
could, plunged head foremost at his old master, and the two went
driving out into the workshop together, plying their hands and feet
so briskly that they looked like half-a-dozen, while Miggs and Mrs
Varden screamed for twelve.

It would have been easy for Varden to knock his old 'prentice down,
and bind him hand and foot; but as he was loth to hurt him in his
then defenceless state, he contented himself with parrying his
blows when he could, taking them in perfect good part when he could
not, and keeping between him and the door, until a favourable
opportunity should present itself for forcing him to retreat up-
stairs, and shutting him up in his own room. But, in the goodness
of his heart, he calculated too much upon his adversary's weakness,
and forgot that drunken men who have lost the power of walking
steadily, can often run. Watching his time, Simon Tappertit made a
cunning show of falling back, staggered unexpectedly forward,
brushed past him, opened the door (he knew the trick of that lock
well), and darted down the street like a mad dog. The locksmith
paused for a moment in the excess of his astonishment, and then
gave chase.

It was an excellent season for a run, for at that silent hour the
streets were deserted, the air was cool, and the flying figure
before him distinctly visible at a great distance, as it sped away,
with a long gaunt shadow following at its heels. But the short-
winded locksmith had no chance against a man of Sim's youth and
spare figure, though the day had been when he could have run him
down in no time. The space between them rapidly increased, and as
the rays of the rising sun streamed upon Simon in the act of
turning a distant corner, Gabriel Varden was fain to give up, and
sit down on a doorstep to fetch his breath. Simon meanwhile,
without once stopping, fled at the same degree of swiftness to The
Boot, where, as he well knew, some of his company were lying, and
at which respectable hostelry--for he had already acquired the
distinction of being in great peril of the law--a friendly watch
had been expecting him all night, and was even now on the look-out
for his coming.

'Go thy ways, Sim, go thy ways,' said the locksmith, as soon as he
could speak. 'I have done my best for thee, poor lad, and would
have saved thee, but the rope is round thy neck, I fear.'

So saying, and shaking his head in a very sorrowful and
disconsolate manner, he turned back, and soon re-entered his own
house, where Mrs Varden and the faithful Miggs had been anxiously
expecting his return.

Now Mrs Varden (and by consequence Miss Miggs likewise) was
impressed with a secret misgiving that she had done wrong; that she
had, to the utmost of her small means, aided and abetted the growth
of disturbances, the end of which it was impossible to foresee;
that she had led remotely to the scene which had just passed; and
that the locksmith's time for triumph and reproach had now arrived
indeed. And so strongly did Mrs Varden feel this, and so
crestfallen was she in consequence, that while her husband was
pursuing their lost journeyman, she secreted under her chair the
little red-brick dwelling-house with the yellow roof, lest it
should furnish new occasion for reference to the painful theme; and
now hid the same still more, with the skirts of her dress.

But it happened that the locksmith had been thinking of this very
article on his way home, and that, coming into the room and not
seeing it, he at once demanded where it was.

Mrs Varden had no resource but to produce it, which she did with
many tears, and broken protestations that if she could have known--

'Yes, yes,' said Varden, 'of course--I know that. I don't mean to
reproach you, my dear. But recollect from this time that all good
things perverted to evil purposes, are worse than those which are
naturally bad. A thoroughly wicked woman, is wicked indeed. When
religion goes wrong, she is very wrong, for the same reason. Let
us say no more about it, my dear.'

So he dropped the red-brick dwelling-house on the floor, and
setting his heel upon it, crushed it into pieces. The halfpence,
and sixpences, and other voluntary contributions, rolled about in
all directions, but nobody offered to touch them, or to take them
up.

'That,' said the locksmith, 'is easily disposed of, and I would to
Heaven that everything growing out of the same society could be
settled as easily.'

'It happens very fortunately, Varden,' said his wife, with her
handkerchief to her eyes, 'that in case any more disturbances
should happen--which I hope not; I sincerely hope not--'

'I hope so too, my dear.'

'--That in case any should occur, we have the piece of paper which
that poor misguided young man brought.'

'Ay, to be sure,' said the locksmith, turning quickly round.
'Where is that piece of paper?'

Mrs Varden stood aghast as he took it from her outstretched band,
tore it into fragments, and threw them under the grate.

'Not use it?' she said.

'Use it!' cried the locksmith. No! Let them come and pull the
roof about our ears; let them burn us out of house and home; I'd
neither have the protection of their leader, nor chalk their howl
upon my door, though, for not doing it, they shot me on my own
threshold. Use it! Let them come and do their worst. The first
man who crosses my doorstep on such an errand as theirs, had better
be a hundred miles away. Let him look to it. The others may have
their will. I wouldn't beg or buy them off, if, instead of every
pound of iron in the place, there was a hundred weight of gold.
Get you to bed, Martha. I shall take down the shutters and go to
work.'

'So early!' said his wife.

'Ay,' replied the locksmith cheerily, 'so early. Come when they
may, they shall not find us skulking and hiding, as if we feared to
take our portion of the light of day, and left it all to them. So
pleasant dreams to you, my dear, and cheerful sleep!'

With that he gave his wife a hearty kiss, and bade her delay no
longer, or it would be time to rise before she lay down to rest.
Mrs Varden quite amiably and meekly walked upstairs, followed by
Miggs, who, although a good deal subdued, could not refrain from
sundry stimulative coughs and sniffs by the way, or from holding up
her hands in astonishment at the daring conduct of master.

Chapter 52

A mob is usually a creature of very mysterious existence,
particularly in a large city. Where it comes from or whither it
goes, few men can tell. Assembling and dispersing with equal
suddenness, it is as difficult to follow to its various sources as
the sea itself; nor does the parallel stop here, for the ocean is
not more fickle and uncertain, more terrible when roused, more
unreasonable, or more cruel.

The people who were boisterous at Westminster upon the Friday
morning, and were eagerly bent upon the work of devastation in Duke
Street and Warwick Street at night, were, in the mass, the same.
Allowing for the chance accessions of which any crowd is morally
sure in a town where there must always be a large number of idle
and profligate persons, one and the same mob was at both places.
Yet they spread themselves in various directions when they
dispersed in the afternoon, made no appointment for reassembling,
had no definite purpose or design, and indeed, for anything they
knew, were scattered beyond the hope of future union.

At The Boot, which, as has been shown, was in a manner the head-
quarters of the rioters, there were not, upon this Friday night, a
dozen people. Some slept in the stable and outhouses, some in the
common room, some two or three in beds. The rest were in their
usual homes or haunts. Perhaps not a score in all lay in the
adjacent fields and lanes, and under haystacks, or near the warmth
of brick-kilns, who had not their accustomed place of rest beneath
the open sky. As to the public ways within the town, they had
their ordinary nightly occupants, and no others; the usual amount
of vice and wretchedness, but no more.

The experience of one evening, however, had taught the reckless
leaders of disturbance, that they had but to show themselves in the
streets, to be immediately surrounded by materials which they could
only have kept together when their aid was not required, at great
risk, expense, and trouble. Once possessed of this secret, they
were as confident as if twenty thousand men, devoted to their will,
had been encamped about them, and assumed a confidence which could
not have been surpassed, though that had really been the case. All
day, Saturday, they remained quiet. On Sunday, they rather studied
how to keep their men within call, and in full hope, than to follow
out, by any fierce measure, their first day's proceedings.

'I hope,' said Dennis, as, with a loud yawn, he raised his body
from a heap of straw on which he had been sleeping, and supporting
his head upon his hand, appealed to Hugh on Sunday morning, 'that
Muster Gashford allows some rest? Perhaps he'd have us at work
again already, eh?'

'It's not his way to let matters drop, you may be sure of that,'
growled Hugh in answer. 'I'm in no humour to stir yet, though.
I'm as stiff as a dead body, and as full of ugly scratches as if I
had been fighting all day yesterday with wild cats.'

'You've so much enthusiasm, that's it,' said Dennis, looking with
great admiration at the uncombed head, matted beard, and torn hands
and face of the wild figure before him; 'you're such a devil of a
fellow. You hurt yourself a hundred times more than you need,
because you will be foremost in everything, and will do more than
the rest.'

'For the matter of that,' returned Hugh, shaking back his ragged
hair and glancing towards the door of the stable in which they lay;
'there's one yonder as good as me. What did I tell you about him?
Did I say he was worth a dozen, when you doubted him?'

Mr Dennis rolled lazily over upon his breast, and resting his chin
upon his hand in imitation of the attitude in which Hugh lay, said,
as he too looked towards the door:

'Ay, ay, you knew him, brother, you knew him. But who'd suppose to
look at that chap now, that he could be the man he is! Isn't it a
thousand cruel pities, brother, that instead of taking his nat'ral
rest and qualifying himself for further exertions in this here
honourable cause, he should be playing at soldiers like a boy? And
his cleanliness too!' said Mr Dennis, who certainly had no reason
to entertain a fellow feeling with anybody who was particular on
that score; 'what weaknesses he's guilty of; with respect to his
cleanliness! At five o'clock this morning, there he was at the
pump, though any one would think he had gone through enough, the
day before yesterday, to be pretty fast asleep at that time. But
no--when I woke for a minute or two, there he was at the pump, and
if you'd seen him sticking them peacock's feathers into his hat
when he'd done washing--ah! I'm sorry he's such a imperfect
character, but the best on us is incomplete in some pint of view or
another.'

The subject of this dialogue and of these concluding remarks, which
were uttered in a tone of philosophical meditation, was, as the
reader will have divined, no other than Barnaby, who, with his flag
in hand, stood sentry in the little patch of sunlight at the
distant door, or walked to and fro outside, singing softly to
himself; and keeping time to the music of some clear church bells.
Whether he stood still, leaning with both hands on the flagstaff,
or, bearing it upon his shoulder, paced slowly up and down, the
careful arrangement of his poor dress, and his erect and lofty
bearing, showed how high a sense he had of the great importance of
his trust, and how happy and how proud it made him. To Hugh and
his companion, who lay in a dark corner of the gloomy shed, he, and
the sunlight, and the peaceful Sabbath sound to which he made
response, seemed like a bright picture framed by the door, and set
off by the stable's blackness. The whole formed such a contrast to
themselves, as they lay wallowing, like some obscene animals, in
their squalor and wickedness on the two heaps of straw, that for a
few moments they looked on without speaking, and felt almost
ashamed.

'Ah!'said Hugh at length, carrying it off with a laugh: 'He's a
rare fellow is Barnaby, and can do more, with less rest, or meat,
or drink, than any of us. As to his soldiering, I put him on duty
there.'

'Then there was a object in it, and a proper good one too, I'll be
sworn,' retorted Dennis with a broad grin, and an oath of the same
quality. 'What was it, brother?'

'Why, you see,' said Hugh, crawling a little nearer to him, 'that
our noble captain yonder, came in yesterday morning rather the
worse for liquor, and was--like you and me--ditto last night.'

Dennis looked to where Simon Tappertit lay coiled upon a truss of
hay, snoring profoundly, and nodded.

'And our noble captain,' continued Hugh with another laugh, 'our
noble captain and I, have planned for to-morrow a roaring
expedition, with good profit in it.'

'Again the Papists?' asked Dennis, rubbing his hands.

'Ay, against the Papists--against one of 'em at least, that some of
us, and I for one, owe a good heavy grudge to.'

'Not Muster Gashford's friend that he spoke to us about in my
house, eh?' said Dennis, brimfull of pleasant expectation.

'The same man,' said Hugh.

'That's your sort,' cried Mr Dennis, gaily shaking hands with him,
'that's the kind of game. Let's have revenges and injuries, and
all that, and we shall get on twice as fast. Now you talk,
indeed!'

'Ha ha ha! The captain,' added Hugh, 'has thoughts of carrying off
a woman in the bustle, and--ha ha ha!--and so have I!'

Mr Dennis received this part of the scheme with a wry face,
observing that as a general principle he objected to women
altogether, as being unsafe and slippery persons on whom there was
no calculating with any certainty, and who were never in the same
mind for four-and-twenty hours at a stretch. He might have
expatiated on this suggestive theme at much greater length, but
that it occurred to him to ask what connection existed between the
proposed expedition and Barnaby's being posted at the stable-door
as sentry; to which Hugh cautiously replied in these words:

'Why, the people we mean to visit, were friends of his, once upon a
time, and I know that much of him to feel pretty sure that if he
thought we were going to do them any harm, he'd be no friend to our
side, but would lend a ready hand to the other. So I've persuaded
him (for I know him of old) that Lord George has picked him out to
guard this place to-morrow while we're away, and that it's a great
honour--and so he's on duty now, and as proud of it as if he was a
general. Ha ha! What do you say to me for a careful man as well
as a devil of a one?'

Mr Dennis exhausted himself in compliments, and then added,

'But about the expedition itself--'

'About that,' said Hugh, 'you shall hear all particulars from me
and the great captain conjointly and both together--for see, he's
waking up. Rouse yourself, lion-heart. Ha ha! Put a good face
upon it, and drink again. Another hair of the dog that bit you,
captain! Call for drink! There's enough of gold and silver cups
and candlesticks buried underneath my bed,' he added, rolling back
the straw, and pointing to where the ground was newly turned, 'to
pay for it, if it was a score of casks full. Drink, captain!'

Mr Tappertit received these jovial promptings with a very bad
grace, being much the worse, both in mind and body, for his two
nights of debauch, and but indifferently able to stand upon his
legs. With Hugh's assistance, however, he contrived to stagger to
the pump; and having refreshed himself with an abundant draught of
cold water, and a copious shower of the same refreshing liquid on
his head and face, he ordered some rum and milk to be served; and
upon that innocent beverage and some biscuits and cheese made a
pretty hearty meal. That done, he disposed himself in an easy
attitude on the ground beside his two companions (who were
carousing after their own tastes), and proceeded to enlighten Mr
Dennis in reference to to-morrow's project.

That their conversation was an interesting one, was rendered
manifest by its length, and by the close attention of all three.
That it was not of an oppressively grave character, but was
enlivened by various pleasantries arising out of the subject, was
clear from their loud and frequent roars of laughter, which
startled Barnaby on his post, and made him wonder at their levity.
But he was not summoned to join them, until they had eaten, and
drunk, and slept, and talked together for some hours; not, indeed,
until the twilight; when they informed him that they were about to
make a slight demonstration in the streets--just to keep the
people's hands in, as it was Sunday night, and the public might
otherwise be disappointed--and that he was free to accompany them
if he would.

Without the slightest preparation, saving that they carried clubs
and wore the blue cockade, they sallied out into the streets; and,
with no more settled design than that of doing as much mischief as
they could, paraded them at random. Their numbers rapidly
increasing, they soon divided into parties; and agreeing to meet
by-and-by, in the fields near Welbeck Street, scoured the town in
various directions. The largest body, and that which augmented
with the greatest rapidity, was the one to which Hugh and Barnaby
belonged. This took its way towards Moorfields, where there was a
rich chapel, and in which neighbourhood several Catholic families
were known to reside.

Beginning with the private houses so occupied, they broke open the
doors and windows; and while they destroyed the furniture and left
but the bare walls, made a sharp search for tools and engines of
destruction, such as hammers, pokers, axes, saws, and such like
instruments. Many of the rioters made belts of cord, of
handkerchiefs, or any material they found at hand, and wore these
weapons as openly as pioneers upon a field-day. There was not the
least disguise or concealment--indeed, on this night, very little
excitement or hurry. From the chapels, they tore down and took
away the very altars, benches, pulpits, pews, and flooring; from
the dwelling-houses, the very wainscoting and stairs. This Sunday
evening's recreation they pursued like mere workmen who had a
certain task to do, and did it. Fifty resolute men might have
turned them at any moment; a single company of soldiers could have
scattered them like dust; but no man interposed, no authority
restrained them, and, except by the terrified persons who fled from
their approach, they were as little heeded as if they were pursuing
their lawful occupations with the utmost sobriety and good
conduct.

In the same manner, they marched to the place of rendezvous agreed
upon, made great fires in the fields, and reserving the most
valuable of their spoils, burnt the rest. Priestly garments,
images of saints, rich stuffs and ornaments, altar-furniture and
household goods, were cast into the flames, and shed a glare on the
whole country round; but they danced and howled, and roared about
these fires till they were tired, and were never for an instant
checked.

As the main body filed off from this scene of action, and passed
down Welbeck Street, they came upon Gashford, who had been a
witness of their proceedings, and was walking stealthily along the
pavement. Keeping up with him, and yet not seeming to speak, Hugh
muttered in his ear:

'Is this better, master?'

'No,' said Gashford. 'It is not.'

'What would you have?' said Hugh. 'Fevers are never at their
height at once. They must get on by degrees.'

'I would have you,' said Gashford, pinching his arm with such
malevolence that his nails seemed to meet in the skin; 'I would
have you put some meaning into your work. Fools! Can you make no
better bonfires than of rags and scraps? Can you burn nothing
whole?'

'A little patience, master,' said Hugh. 'Wait but a few hours, and
you shall see. Look for a redness in the sky, to-morrow night.'

With that, he fell back into his place beside Barnaby; and when the
secretary looked after him, both were lost in the crowd.

Chapter 53

The next day was ushered in by merry peals of bells, and by the
firing of the Tower guns; flags were hoisted on many of the church-
steeples; the usual demonstrations were made in honour of the
anniversary of the King's birthday; and every man went about his
pleasure or business as if the city were in perfect order, and
there were no half-smouldering embers in its secret places, which,
on the approach of night, would kindle up again and scatter ruin
and dismay abroad. The leaders of the riot, rendered still more
daring by the success of last night and by the booty they had
acquired, kept steadily together, and only thought of implicating
the mass of their followers so deeply that no hope of pardon or
reward might tempt them to betray their more notorious confederates
into the hands of justice.

Indeed, the sense of having gone too far to be forgiven, held the
timid together no less than the bold. Many who would readily have
pointed out the foremost rioters and given evidence against them,
felt that escape by that means was hopeless, when their every act
had been observed by scores of people who had taken no part in the
disturbances; who had suffered in their persons, peace, or
property, by the outrages of the mob; who would be most willing
witnesses; and whom the government would, no doubt, prefer to any
King's evidence that might be offered. Many of this class had
deserted their usual occupations on the Saturday morning; some had
been seen by their employers active in the tumult; others knew they
must be suspected, and that they would be discharged if they
returned; others had been desperate from the beginning, and
comforted themselves with the homely proverb, that, being hanged at
all, they might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb. They all
hoped and believed, in a greater or less degree, that the
government they seemed to have paralysed, would, in its terror,
come to terms with them in the end, and suffer them to make their
own conditions. The least sanguine among them reasoned with
himself that, at the worst, they were too many to be all punished,
and that he had as good a chance of escape as any other man. The
great mass never reasoned or thought at all, but were stimulated by
their own headlong passions, by poverty, by ignorance, by the love
of mischief, and the hope of plunder.

One other circumstance is worthy of remark; and that is, that from
the moment of their first outbreak at Westminster, every symptom of
order or preconcerted arrangement among them vanished. When they
divided into parties and ran to different quarters of the town, it
was on the spontaneous suggestion of the moment. Each party
swelled as it went along, like rivers as they roll towards the sea;
new leaders sprang up as they were wanted, disappeared when the
necessity was over, and reappeared at the next crisis. Each tumult
took shape and form from the circumstances of the moment; sober
workmen, going home from their day's labour, were seen to cast down
their baskets of tools and become rioters in an instant; mere boys
on errands did the like. In a word, a moral plague ran through the
city. The noise, and hurry, and excitement, had for hundreds and
hundreds an attraction they had no firmness to resist. The
contagion spread like a dread fever: an infectious madness, as yet
not near its height, seized on new victims every hour, and society
began to tremble at their ravings.

It was between two and three o'clock in the afternoon when
Gashford looked into the lair described in the last chapter, and
seeing only Barnaby and Dennis there, inquired for Hugh.

He was out, Barnaby told him; had gone out more than an hour ago;
and had not yet returned.

'Dennis!' said the smiling secretary, in his smoothest voice, as he
sat down cross-legged on a barrel, 'Dennis!'

The hangman struggled into a sitting posture directly, and with his
eyes wide open, looked towards him.

'How do you do, Dennis?' said Gashford, nodding. 'I hope you have
suffered no inconvenience from your late exertions, Dennis?'

'I always will say of you, Muster Gashford,' returned the hangman,
staring at him, 'that that 'ere quiet way of yours might almost
wake a dead man. It is,' he added, with a muttered oath--still
staring at him in a thoughtful manner--'so awful sly!'

'So distinct, eh Dennis?'

'Distinct!' he answered, scratching his head, and keeping his eyes
upon the secretary's face; 'I seem to hear it, Muster Gashford, in
my wery bones.'

'I am very glad your sense of hearing is so sharp, and that I
succeed in making myself so intelligible,' said Gashford, in his
unvarying, even tone. 'Where is your friend?'

Mr Dennis looked round as in expectation of beholding him asleep
upon his bed of straw; then remembering he had seen him go out,
replied:

'I can't say where he is, Muster Gashford, I expected him back
afore now. I hope it isn't time that we was busy, Muster
Gashford?'

'Nay,' said the secretary, 'who should know that as well as you?
How can I tell you, Dennis? You are perfect master of your own
actions, you know, and accountable to nobody--except sometimes to
the law, eh?'

Dennis, who was very much baffled by the cool matter-of-course
manner of this reply, recovered his self-possession on his
professional pursuits being referred to, and pointing towards
Barnaby, shook his head and frowned.

'Hush!' cried Barnaby.

'Ah! Do hush about that, Muster Gashford,' said the hangman in a
low voice, 'pop'lar prejudices--you always forget--well, Barnaby,
my lad, what's the matter?'

'I hear him coming,' he answered: 'Hark! Do you mark that? That's
his foot! Bless you, I know his step, and his dog's too. Tramp,
tramp, pit-pat, on they come together, and, ha ha ha!--and here
they are!' he cried, joyfully welcoming Hugh with both hands, and
then patting him fondly on the back, as if instead of being the
rough companion he was, he had been one of the most prepossessing
of men. 'Here he is, and safe too! I am glad to see him back
again, old Hugh!'

'I'm a Turk if he don't give me a warmer welcome always than any
man of sense,' said Hugh, shaking hands with him with a kind of
ferocious friendship, strange enough to see. 'How are you, boy?'

'Hearty!' cried Barnaby, waving his hat. 'Ha ha ha! And merrry
too, Hugh! And ready to do anything for the good cause, and the
right, and to help the kind, mild, pale-faced gentleman--the lord
they used so ill--eh, Hugh?'

'Ay!' returned his friend, dropping his hand, and looking at
Gashford for an instant with a changed expression before he spoke
to him. 'Good day, master!'

'And good day to you,' replied the secretary, nursing his leg.

'And many good days--whole years of them, I hope. You are heated.'

'So would you have been, master,' said Hugh, wiping his face, 'if
you'd been running here as fast as I have.'

'You know the news, then? Yes, I supposed you would have heard it.'

'News! what news?'

'You don't?' cried Gashford, raising his eyebrows with an
exclamation of surprise. 'Dear me! Come; then I AM the first to
make you acquainted with your distinguished position, after all.
Do you see the King's Arms a-top?' he smilingly asked, as he took a
large paper from his pocket, unfolded it, and held it out for
Hugh's inspection.

'Well!' said Hugh. 'What's that to me?'

'Much. A great deal,' replied the secretary. 'Read it.'

'I told you, the first time I saw you, that I couldn't read,' said
Hugh, impatiently. 'What in the Devil's name's inside of it?'

'It is a proclamation from the King in Council,' said Gashford,
'dated to-day, and offering a reward of five hundred pounds--five
hundred pounds is a great deal of money, and a large temptation to
some people--to any one who will discover the person or persons
most active in demolishing those chapels on Saturday night.'

'Is that all?' cried Hugh, with an indifferent air. 'I knew of
that.'

'Truly I might have known you did,' said Gashford, smiling, and
folding up the document again. 'Your friend, I might have guessed--
indeed I did guess--was sure to tell you.'

'My friend!' stammered Hugh, with an unsuccessful effort to appear
surprised. 'What friend?'

'Tut tut--do you suppose I don't know where you have been?'
retorted Gashford, rubbing his hands, and beating the back of one
on the palm of the other, and looking at him with a cunning eye.
'How dull you think me! Shall I say his name?'

'No,' said Hugh, with a hasty glance towards Dennis.

'You have also heard from him, no doubt,' resumed the secretary,
after a moment's pause, 'that the rioters who have been taken (poor
fellows) are committed for trial, and that some very active
witnesses have had the temerity to appear against them. Among
others--' and here he clenched his teeth, as if he would suppress
by force some violent words that rose upon his tongue; and spoke
very slowly. 'Among others, a gentleman who saw the work going on
in Warwick Street; a Catholic gentleman; one Haredale.'

Hugh would have prevented his uttering the word, but it was out
already. Hearing the name, Barnaby turned swiftly round.

'Duty, duty, bold Barnaby!' cried Hugh, assuming his wildest and
most rapid manner, and thrusting into his hand his staff and flag
which leant against the wall. 'Mount guard without loss of time,
for we are off upon our expedition. Up, Dennis, and get ready!
Take care that no one turns the straw upon my bed, brave Barnaby;
we know what's underneath it--eh? Now, master, quick! What you
have to say, say speedily, for the little captain and a cluster of
'em are in the fields, and only waiting for us. Sharp's the word,
and strike's the action. Quick!'

Barnaby was not proof against this bustle and despatch. The look
of mingled astonishtnent and anger which had appeared in his face
when he turned towards them, faded from it as the words passed from
his memory, like breath from a polished mirror; and grasping the
weapon which Hugh forced upon him, he proudly took his station at
the door, beyond their hearing.

'You might have spoiled our plans, master,' said Hugh. 'YOU, too,
of all men!'

'Who would have supposed that HE would be so quick?' urged
Gashford.

'He's as quick sometimes--I don't mean with his hands, for that you
know, but with his head--as you or any man,' said Hugh. 'Dennis,
it's time we were going; they're waiting for us; I came to tell
you. Reach me my stick and belt. Here! Lend a hand, master.
Fling this over my shoulder, and buckle it behind, will you?'

'Brisk as ever!' said the secretary, adjusting it for him as he
desired.

'A man need be brisk to-day; there's brisk work a-foot.'

'There is, is there?' said Gashford. He said it with such a
provoking assumption of ignorance, that Hugh, looking over his
shoulder and angrily down upon him, replied:

'Is there! You know there is! Who knows better than you, master,
that the first great step to be taken is to make examples of these
witnesses, and frighten all men from appearing against us or any of
our body, any more?'

'There's one we know of,' returned Gashford, with an expressive
smile, 'who is at least as well informed upon that subject as you
or I.'

'If we mean the same gentleman, as I suppose we do,' Hugh rejoined
softly, 'I tell you this--he's as good and quick information about
everything as--' here he paused and looked round, as if to make
sure that the person in question was not within hearing, 'as Old
Nick himself. Have you done that, master? How slow you are!'

'It's quite fast now,' said Gashford, rising. 'I say--you didn't
find that your friend disapproved of to-day's little expedition?
Ha ha ha! It is fortunate it jumps so well with the witness
policy; for, once planned, it must have been carried out. And now
you are going, eh?'

'Now we are going, master!' Hugh replied. 'Any parting words?'

'Oh dear, no,' said Gashford sweetly. 'None!'

'You're sure?' cried Hugh, nudging the grinning Dennis.

'Quite sure, eh, Muster Gashford?' chuckled the hangman.

Gashford paused a moment, struggling with his caution and his
malice; then putting himself between the two men, and laying a hand
upon the arm of each, said, in a cramped whisper:

'Do not, my good friends--I am sure you will not--forget our talk
one night--in your house, Dennis--about this person. No mercy, no
quarter, no two beams of his house to be left standing where the
builder placed them! Fire, the saying goes, is a good servant, but
a bad master. Makes it HIS master; he deserves no better. But I
am sure you will be firm, I am sure you will be very resolute, I am
sure you will remember that he thirsts for your lives, and those of
all your brave companions. If you ever acted like staunch
fellows, you will do so to-day. Won't you, Dennis--won't you,
Hugh?'

The two looked at him, and at each other; then bursting into a roar
of laughter, brandished their staves above their heads, shook
hands, and hurried out.

When they had been gone a little time, Gashford followed. They
were yet in sight, and hastening to that part of the adjacent
fields in which their fellows had already mustered; Hugh was
looking back, and flourishing his hat to Barnaby, who, delighted
with his trust, replied in the same way, and then resumed his
pacing up and down before the stable-door, where his feet had worn
a path already. And when Gashford himself was far distant, and
looked back for the last time, he was still walking to and fro,
with the same measured tread; the most devoted and the blithest
champion that ever maintained a post, and felt his heart lifted up
with a brave sense of duty, and determination to defend it to the
last.

Smiling at the simplicity of the poor idiot, Gashford betook
himself to Welbeck Street by a different path from that which he
knew the rioters would take, and sitting down behind a curtain in
one of the upper windows of Lord George Gordon's house, waited
impatiently for their coming. They were so long, that although he
knew it had been settled they should come that way, he had a
misgiving they must have changed their plans and taken some other
route. But at length the roar of voices was heard in the
neighbouring fields, and soon afterwards they came thronging past,
in a great body.

However, they were not all, nor nearly all, in one body, but were,
as he soon found, divided into four parties, each of which stopped
before the house to give three cheers, and then went on; the
leaders crying out in what direction they were going, and calling
on the spectators to join them. The first detachment, carrying, by
way of banners, some relics of the havoc they had made in
Moorfields, proclaimed that they were on their way to Chelsea,
whence they would return in the same order, to make of the spoil
they bore, a great bonfire, near at hand. The second gave out that
they were bound for Wapping, to destroy a chapel; the third, that
their place of destination was East Smithfield, and their object
the same. All this was done in broad, bright, summer day. Gay
carriages and chairs stopped to let them pass, or turned back to
avoid them; people on foot stood aside in doorways, or perhaps
knocked and begged permission to stand at a window, or in the hall,
until the rioters had passed: but nobody interfered with them; and
when they had gone by, everything went on as usual.

There still remained the fourth body, and for that the secretary
looked with a most intense eagerness. At last it came up. It was
numerous, and composed of picked men; for as he gazed down among
them, he recognised many upturned faces which he knew well--those
of Simon Tappertit, Hugh, and Dennis in the front, of course. They
halted and cheered, as the others had done; but when they moved
again, they did not, like them, proclaim what design they had.
Hugh merely raised his hat upon the bludgeon he carried, and
glancing at a spectator on the opposite side of the way, was gone.

Gashford followed the direction of his glance instinctively, and
saw, standing on the pavement, and wearing the blue cockade, Sir
John Chester. He held his hat an inch or two above his head, to
propitiate the mob; and, resting gracefully on his cane, smiling
pleasantly, and displaying his dress and person to the very best
advantage, looked on in the most tranquil state imaginable. For
all that, and quick and dexterous as he was, Gashford had seen him
recognise Hugh with the air of a patron. He had no longer any eyes
for the crowd, but fixed his keen regards upon Sir John.

He stood in the same place and posture until the last man in the
concourse had turned the corner of the street; then very
deliberately took the blue cockade out of his hat; put it carefully
in his pocket, ready for the next emergency; refreshed himself with
a pinch of snuff; put up his box; and was walking slowly off, when
a passing carriage stopped, and a lady's hand let down the glass.
Sir John's hat was off again immediately. After a minute's
conversation at the carriage-window, in which it was apparent that
he was vastly entertaining on the subject of the mob, he stepped
lightly in, and was driven away.

The secretary smiled, but he had other thoughts to dwell upon, and
soon dismissed the topic. Dinner was brought him, but he sent it
down untasted; and, in restless pacings up and down the room, and
constant glances at the clock, and many futile efforts to sit down
and read, or go to sleep, or look out of the window, consumed four
weary hours. When the dial told him thus much time had crept away,
he stole upstairs to the top of the house, and coming out upon the
roof sat down, with his face towards the east.

Heedless of the fresh air that blew upon his heated brow, of the
pleasant meadows from which he turned, of the piles of roofs and
chimneys upon which he looked, of the smoke and rising mist he
vainly sought to pierce, of the shrill cries of children at their
evening sports, the distant hum and turmoil of the town, the
cheerful country breath that rustled past to meet it, and to droop,
and die; he watched, and watched, till it was dark save for the
specks of light that twinkled in the streets below and far away--
and, as the darkness deepened, strained his gaze and grew more
eager yet.

'Nothing but gloom in that direction, still!' he muttered
restlessly. 'Dog! where is the redness in the sky, you promised
me!'

Chapter 54

Rumours of the prevailing disturbances had, by this time, begun to
be pretty generally circulated through the towns and villages round
London, and the tidings were everywhere received with that appetite
for the marvellous and love of the terrible which have probably
been among the natural characteristics of mankind since the
creation of the world. These accounts, however, appeared, to many
persons at that day--as they would to us at the present, but that
we know them to be matter of history--so monstrous and improbable,
that a great number of those who were resident at a distance, and
who were credulous enough on other points, were really unable to
bring their minds to believe that such things could be; and
rejected the intelligence they received on all hands, as wholly
fabulous and absurd.

Mr Willet--not so much, perhaps, on account of his having argued
and settled the matter with himself, as by reason of his
constitutional obstinacy--was one of those who positively refused
to entertain the current topic for a moment. On this very evening,
and perhaps at the very time when Gashford kept his solitary watch,
old John was so red in the face with perpetually shaking his head
in contradiction of his three ancient cronies and pot companions,
that he was quite a phenomenon to behold, and lighted up the
Maypole Porch wherein they sat together, like a monstrous carbuncle
in a fairy tale.

'Do you think, sir,' said Mr Willet, looking hard at Solomon
Daisy--for it was his custom in cases of personal altercation to
fasten upon the smallest man in the party--'do you think, sir, that
I'm a born fool?'

'No, no, Johnny,' returned Solomon, looking round upon the little
circle of which he formed a part: 'We all know better than that.
You're no fool, Johnny. No, no!'

Mr Cobb and Mr Parkes shook their heads in unison, muttering, 'No,
no, Johnny, not you!' But as such compliments had usually the
effect of making Mr Willet rather more dogged than before, he
surveyed them with a look of deep disdain, and returned for answer:

'Then what do you mean by coming here, and telling me that this
evening you're a-going to walk up to London together--you three--
you--and have the evidence of your own senses? An't,' said Mr
Willet, putting his pipe in his mouth with an air of solemn
disgust, 'an't the evidence of MY senses enough for you?'

'But we haven't got it, Johnny,' pleaded Parkes, humbly.

'You haven't got it, sir?' repeated Mr Willet, eyeing him from top
to toe. 'You haven't got it, sir? You HAVE got it, sir. Don't I
tell you that His blessed Majesty King George the Third would no
more stand a rioting and rollicking in his streets, than he'd stand
being crowed over by his own Parliament?'

'Yes, Johnny, but that's your sense--not your senses,' said the
adventurous Mr Parkes.

'How do you know? 'retorted John with great dignity. 'You're a
contradicting pretty free, you are, sir. How do YOU know which it
is? I'm not aware I ever told you, sir.'

Mr Parkes, finding himself in the position of having got into
metaphysics without exactly seeing his way out of them, stammered
forth an apology and retreated from the argument. There then
ensued a silence of some ten minutes or a quarter of an hour, at
the expiration of which period Mr Willet was observed to rumble and
shake with laughter, and presently remarked, in reference to his
late adversary, 'that he hoped he had tackled him enough.'
Thereupon Messrs Cobb and Daisy laughed, and nodded, and Parkes was
looked upon as thoroughly and effectually put down.

'Do you suppose if all this was true, that Mr Haredale would be
constantly away from home, as he is?' said John, after another
silence. 'Do you think he wouldn't be afraid to leave his house
with them two young women in it, and only a couple of men, or so?'

'Ay, but then you know,' returned Solomon Daisy, 'his house is a
goodish way out of London, and they do say that the rioters won't
go more than two miles, or three at the farthest, off the stones.
Besides, you know, some of the Catholic gentlefolks have actually
sent trinkets and suchlike down here for safety--at least, so the
story goes.'

'The story goes!' said Mr Willet testily. 'Yes, sir. The story
goes that you saw a ghost last March. But nobody believes it.'

'Well!' said Solomon, rising, to divert the attention of his two
friends, who tittered at this retort: 'believed or disbelieved,
it's true; and true or not, if we mean to go to London, we must be
going at once. So shake hands, Johnny, and good night.'

'I shall shake hands,' returned the landlord, putting his into his
pockets, 'with no man as goes to London on such nonsensical
errands.'

The three cronies were therefore reduced to the necessity of
shaking his elbows; having performed that ceremony, and brought
from the house their hats, and sticks, and greatcoats, they bade
him good night and departed; promising to bring him on the morrow
full and true accounts of the real state of the city, and if it
were quiet, to give him the full merit of his victory.

John Willet looked after them, as they plodded along the road in
the rich glow of a summer evening; and knocking the ashes out of
his pipe, laughed inwardly at their folly, until his sides were
sore. When he had quite exhausted himself--which took some time,
for he laughed as slowly as he thought and spoke--he sat himself
comfortably with his back to the house, put his legs upon the
bench, then his apron over his face, and fell sound asleep.

How long he slept, matters not; but it was for no brief space, for
when he awoke, the rich light had faded, the sombre hues of night
were falling fast upon the landscape, and a few bright stars were
already twinkling overhead. The birds were all at roost, the
daisies on the green had closed their fairy hoods, the honeysuckle
twining round the porch exhaled its perfume in a twofold degree, as
though it lost its coyness at that silent time and loved to shed
its fragrance on the night; the ivy scarcely stirred its deep green
leaves. How tranquil, and how beautiful it was!

Was there no sound in the air, besides the gentle rustling of the
trees and the grasshopper's merry chirp? Hark! Something very
faint and distant, not unlike the murmuring in a sea-shell. Now it
grew louder, fainter now, and now it altogether died away.
Presently, it came again, subsided, came once more, grew louder,
fainter--swelled into a roar. It was on the road, and varied with
its windings. All at once it burst into a distinct sound--the
voices, and the tramping feet of many men.

It is questionable whether old John Willet, even then, would have
thought of the rioters but for the cries of his cook and housemaid,
who ran screaming upstairs and locked themselves into one of the
old garrets,--shrieking dismally when they had done so, by way of
rendering their place of refuge perfectly secret and secure. These
two females did afterwards depone that Mr Willet in his
consternation uttered but one word, and called that up the stairs
in a stentorian voice, six distinct times. But as this word was a
monosyllable, which, however inoffensive when applied to the
quadruped it denotes, is highly reprehensible when used in
connection with females of unimpeachable character, many persons
were inclined to believe that the young women laboured under some
hallucination caused by excessive fear; and that their ears
deceived them.

Be this as it may, John Willet, in whom the very uttermost extent
of dull-headed perplexity supplied the place of courage, stationed
himself in the porch, and waited for their coming up. Once, it
dimly occurred to him that there was a kind of door to the house,
which had a lock and bolts; and at the same time some shadowy ideas
of shutters to the lower windows, flitted through his brain. But
he stood stock still, looking down the road in the direction in
which the noise was rapidly advancing, and did not so much as take
his hands out of his pockets.

He had not to wait long. A dark mass, looming through a cloud of
dust, soon became visible; the mob quickened their pace; shouting
and whooping like savages, they came rushing on pell mell; and in a
few seconds he was bandied from hand to hand, in the heart of a
crowd of men.

'Halloa!' cried a voice he knew, as the man who spoke came cleaving
through the throng. 'Where is he? Give him to me. Don't hurt
him. How now, old Jack! Ha ha ha!'

Mr Willet looked at him, and saw it was Hugh; but he said nothing,
and thought nothing.

'These lads are thirsty and must drink!' cried Hugh, thrusting him
back towards the house. 'Bustle, Jack, bustle. Show us the best--
the very best--the over-proof that you keep for your own drinking,
Jack!'

John faintly articulated the words, 'Who's to pay?'

'He says "Who's to pay?"' cried Hugh, with a roar of laughter which
was loudly echoed by the crowd. Then turning to John, he added,
'Pay! Why, nobody.'

John stared round at the mass of faces--some grinning, some fierce,
some lighted up by torches, some indistinct, some dusky and
shadowy: some looking at him, some at his house, some at each
other--and while he was, as he thought, in the very act of doing
so, found himself, without any consciousness of having moved, in
the bar; sitting down in an arm-chair, and watching the destruction
of his property, as if it were some queer play or entertainment, of
an astonishing and stupefying nature, but having no reference to
himself--that he could make out--at all.

Yes. Here was the bar--the bar that the boldest never entered
without special invitation--the sanctuary, the mystery, the
hallowed ground: here it was, crammed with men, clubs, sticks,
torches, pistols; filled with a deafening noise, oaths, shouts,
screams, hootings; changed all at once into a bear-garden, a
madhouse, an infernal temple: men darting in and out, by door and
window, smashing the glass, turning the taps, drinking liquor out
of China punchbowls, sitting astride of casks, smoking private and
personal pipes, cutting down the sacred grove of lemons, hacking
and hewing at the celebrated cheese, breaking open inviolable
drawers, putting things in their pockets which didn't belong to
them, dividing his own money before his own eyes, wantonly wasting,
breaking, pulling down and tearing up: nothing quiet, nothing
private: men everywhere--above, below, overhead, in the bedrooms,
in the kitchen, in the yard, in the stables--clambering in at
windows when there were doors wide open; dropping out of windows
when the stairs were handy; leaping over the bannisters into chasms
of passages: new faces and figures presenting themselves every
instant--some yelling, some singing, some fighting, some breaking
glass and crockery, some laying the dust with the liquor they
couldn't drink, some ringing the bells till they pulled them down,
others beating them with pokers till they beat them into fragments:
more men still--more, more, more--swarming on like insects: noise,
smoke, light, darkness, frolic, anger, laughter, groans, plunder,
fear, and ruin!

Nearly all the time while John looked on at this bewildering scene,
Hugh kept near him; and though he was the loudest, wildest, most
destructive villain there, he saved his old master's bones a score
of times. Nay, even when Mr Tappertit, excited by liquor, came up,
and in assertion of his prerogative politely kicked John Willet on
the shins, Hugh bade him return the compliment; and if old John had
had sufficient presence of mind to understand this whispered
direction, and to profit by it, he might no doubt, under Hugh's
protection, have done so with impunity.

At length the band began to reassemble outside the house, and to
call to those within, to join them, for they were losing time.
These murmurs increasing, and attaining a high pitch, Hugh, and
some of those who yet lingered in the bar, and who plainly were the
leaders of the troop, took counsel together, apart, as to what was
to be done with John, to keep him quiet until their Chigwell work
was over. Some proposed to set the house on fire and leave him in
it; others, that he should be reduced to a state of temporary
insensibility, by knocking on the head; others, that he should be
sworn to sit where he was until to-morrow at the same hour; others
again, that he should be gagged and taken off with them, under a
sufficient guard. All these propositions being overruled, it was
concluded, at last, to bind him in his chair, and the word was
passed for Dennis.

'Look'ee here, Jack!' said Hugh, striding up to him: 'We are going
to tie you, hand and foot, but otherwise you won't be hurt. D'ye
hear?'

John Willet looked at another man, as if he didn't know which was
the speaker, and muttered something about an ordinary every Sunday
at two o'clock.

'You won't be hurt I tell you, Jack--do you hear me?' roared Hugh,
impressing the assurance upon him by means of a heavy blow on the
back. 'He's so dead scared, he's woolgathering, I think. Give him
a drop of something to drink here. Hand over, one of you.'

A glass of liquor being passed forward, Hugh poured the contents
down old John's throat. Mr Willet feebly smacked his lips, thrust
his hand into his pocket, and inquired what was to pay; adding, as
he looked vacantly round, that he believed there was a trifle of
broken glass--

'He's out of his senses for the time, it's my belief,' said Hugh,
after shaking him, without any visible effect upon his system,
until his keys rattled in his pocket. 'Where's that Dennis?'

The word was again passed, and presently Mr Dennis, with a long
cord bound about his middle, something after the manner of a friar,
came hurrying in, attended by a body-guard of half-a-dozen of his
men.

'Come! Be alive here!' cried Hugh, stamping his foot upon the
ground. 'Make haste!'

Dennis, with a wink and a nod, unwound the cord from about his
person, and raising his eyes to the ceiling, looked all over it,
and round the walls and cornice, with a curious eye; then shook his
head.

'Move, man, can't you!' cried Hugh, with another impatient stamp of
his foot. 'Are we to wait here, till the cry has gone for ten
miles round, and our work's interrupted?'

'It's all very fine talking, brother,' answered Dennis, stepping
towards him; 'but unless--' and here he whispered in his ear--
'unless we do it over the door, it can't be done at all in this
here room.'

'What can't?' Hugh demanded.

'What can't!' retorted Dennis. 'Why, the old man can't.'

'Why, you weren't going to hang him!' cried Hugh.

'No, brother?' returned the hangman with a stare. 'What else?'

Hugh made no answer, but snatching the rope from his companion's
hand, proceeded to bind old John himself; but his very first move
was so bungling and unskilful, that Mr Dennis entreated, almost
with tears in his eyes, that he might be permitted to perform the
duty. Hugh consenting, be achieved it in a twinkling.

'There,' he said, looking mournfully at John Willet, who displayed
no more emotion in his bonds than he had shown out of them.
'That's what I call pretty and workmanlike. He's quite a picter
now. But, brother, just a word with you--now that he's ready
trussed, as one may say, wouldn't it be better for all parties if
we was to work him off? It would read uncommon well in the
newspapers, it would indeed. The public would think a great deal
more on us!'

Hugh, inferring what his companion meant, rather from his gestures
than his technical mode of expressing himself (to which, as he was
ignorant of his calling, he wanted the clue), rejected this
proposition for the second time, and gave the word 'Forward!' which
was echoed by a hundred voices from without.

'To the Warren!' shouted Dennis as he ran out, followed by the
rest. 'A witness's house, my lads!'

A loud yell followed, and the whole throng hurried off, mad for
pillage and destruction. Hugh lingered behind for a few moments to
stimulate himself with more drink, and to set all the taps running,
a few of which had accidentally been spared; then, glancing round
the despoiled and plundered room, through whose shattered window
the rioters had thrust the Maypole itself,--for even that had been
sawn down,--lighted a torch, clapped the mute and motionless John
Willet on the back, and waving his light above his head, and
uttering a fierce shout, hastened after his companions.

Chapter 55

John Willet, left alone in his dismantled bar, continued to sit
staring about him; awake as to his eyes, certainly, but with all
his powers of reason and reflection in a sound and dreamless
sleep. He looked round upon the room which had been for years,
and was within an hour ago, the pride of his heart; and not a
muscle of his face was moved. The night, without, looked black and
cold through the dreary gaps in the casement; the precious liquids,
now nearly leaked away, dripped with a hollow sound upon the floor;
the Maypole peered ruefully in through the broken window, like the
bowsprit of a wrecked ship; the ground might have been the bottom
of the sea, it was so strewn with precious fragments. Currents of
air rushed in, as the old doors jarred and creaked upon their
hinges; the candles flickered and guttered down, and made long
winding-sheets; the cheery deep-red curtains flapped and fluttered
idly in the wind; even the stout Dutch kegs, overthrown and lying
empty in dark corners, seemed the mere husks of good fellows whose
jollity had departed, and who could kindle with a friendly glow no
more. John saw this desolation, and yet saw it not. He was
perfectly contented to sit there, staring at it, and felt no more
indignation or discomfort in his bonds than if they had been robes
of honour. So far as he was personally concerned, old Time lay
snoring, and the world stood still.

Save for the dripping from the barrels, the rustling of such light
fragments of destruction as the wind affected, and the dull
creaking of the open doors, all was profoundly quiet: indeed,
these sounds, like the ticking of the death-watch in the night,
only made the silence they invaded deeper and more apparent. But
quiet or noisy, it was all one to John. If a train of heavy
artillery could have come up and commenced ball practice outside
the window, it would have been all the same to him. He was a long
way beyond surprise. A ghost couldn't have overtaken him.

By and by he heard a footstep--a hurried, and yet cautious
footstep--coming on towards the house. It stopped, advanced again,
then seemed to go quite round it. Having done that, it came
beneath the window, and a head looked in.

It was strongly relieved against the darkness outside by the glare
of the guttering candles. A pale, worn, withered face; the eyes--
but that was owing to its gaunt condition--unnaturally large and
bright; the hair, a grizzled black. It gave a searching glance all
round the room, and a deep voice said:

'Are you alone in this house?'

John made no sign, though the question was repeated twice, and he
heard it distinctly. After a moment's pause, the man got in at the
window. John was not at all surprised at this, either. There had
been so much getting in and out of window in the course of the last
hour or so, that he had quite forgotten the door, and seemed to
have lived among such exercises from infancy.

The man wore a large, dark, faded cloak, and a slouched hat; he
walked up close to John, and looked at him. John returned the
compliment with interest.

'How long have you been sitting thus?' said the man.

John considered, but nothing came of it.

'Which way have the party gone?'

Some wandering speculations relative to the fashion of the
stranger's boots, got into Mr Willet's mind by some accident or
other, but they got out again in a hurry, and left him in his
former state.

'You would do well to speak,' said the man; 'you may keep a whole
skin, though you have nothing else left that can be hurt. Which
way have the party gone?'

'That!' said John, finding his voice all at once, and nodding with
perfect good faith--he couldn't point; he was so tightly bound--in
exactly the opposite direction to the right one.

'You lie!' said the man angrily, and with a threatening gesture.
'I came that way. You would betray me.'

It was so evident that John's imperturbability was not assumed, but
was the result of the late proceedings under his roof, that the man
stayed his hand in the very act of striking him, and turned away.

John looked after him without so much as a twitch in a single nerve
of his face. He seized a glass, and holding it under one of the
little casks until a few drops were collected, drank them greedily
off; then throwing it down upon the floor impatiently, he took the
vessel in his hands and drained it into his throat. Some scraps of
bread and meat were scattered about, and on these he fell next;
eating them with voracity, and pausing every now and then to
listen for some fancied noise outside. When he had refreshed
himself in this manner with violent haste, and raised another
barrel to his lips, he pulled his hat upon his brow as though he
were about to leave the house, and turned to John.

'Where are your servants?'

Mr Willet indistinctly remembered to have heard the rioters calling
to them to throw the key of the room in which they were, out of
window, for their keeping. He therefore replied, 'Locked up.'

'Well for them if they remain quiet, and well for you if you do the
like,' said the man. 'Now show me the way the party went.'

This time Mr Willet indicated it correctly. The man was hurrying
to the door, when suddenly there came towards them on the wind, the
loud and rapid tolling of an alarm-bell, and then a bright and
vivid glare streamed up, which illumined, not only the whole
chamber, but all the country.

It was not the sudden change from darkness to this dreadful light,
it was not the sound of distant shrieks and shouts of triumph, it
was not this dread invasion of the serenity and peace of night,
that drove the man back as though a thunderbolt had struck him. It
was the Bell. If the ghastliest shape the human mind has ever
pictured in its wildest dreams had risen up before him, he could
not have staggered backward from its touch, as he did from the
first sound of that loud iron voice. With eyes that started from
his head, his limbs convulsed, his face most horrible to see, he
raised one arm high up into the air, and holding something
visionary back and down, with his other hand, drove at it as though
he held a knife and stabbed it to the heart. He clutched his hair,
and stopped his ears, and travelled madly round and round; then
gave a frightful cry, and with it rushed away: still, still, the
Bell tolled on and seemed to follow him--louder and louder, hotter
and hotter yet. The glare grew brighter, the roar of voices
deeper; the crash of heavy bodies falling, shook the air; bright
streams of sparks rose up into the sky; but louder than them all--
rising faster far, to Heaven--a million times more fierce and
furious--pouring forth dreadful secrets after its long silence--
speaking the language of the dead--the Bell--the Bell!

What hunt of spectres could surpass that dread pursuit and flight!
Had there been a legion of them on his track, he could have better
borne it. They would have had a beginning and an end, but here all
space was full. The one pursuing voice was everywhere: it sounded
in the earth, the air; shook the long grass, and howled among the
trembling trees. The echoes caught it up, the owls hooted as it
flew upon the breeze, the nightingale was silent and hid herself
among the thickest boughs: it seemed to goad and urge the angry
fire, and lash it into madness; everything was steeped in one
prevailing red; the glow was everywhere; nature was drenched in
blood: still the remorseless crying of that awful voice--the Bell,
the Bell!

It ceased; but not in his ears. The knell was at his heart. No
work of man had ever voice like that which sounded there, and
warned him that it cried unceasingly to Heaven. Who could hear
that hell, and not know what it said! There was murder in its
every note--cruel, relentless, savage murder--the murder of a
confiding man, by one who held his every trust. Its ringing
summoned phantoms from their graves. What face was that, in which
a friendly smile changed to a look of half incredulous horror,
which stiffened for a moment into one of pain, then changed again
into an imploring glance at Heaven, and so fell idly down with
upturned eyes, like the dead stags' he had often peeped at when a
little child: shrinking and shuddering--there was a dreadful thing
to think of now!--and clinging to an apron as he looked! He sank
upon the ground, and grovelling down as if he would dig himself a
place to hide in, covered his face and ears: but no, no, no,--a
hundred walls and roofs of brass would not shut out that bell, for
in it spoke the wrathful voice of God, and from that voice, the
whole wide universe could not afford a refuge!

While he rushed up and down, not knowing where to turn, and while
he lay crouching there, the work went briskly on indeed. When
they left the Maypole, the rioters formed into a solid body, and
advanced at a quick pace towards the Warren. Rumour of their
approach having gone before, they found the garden-doors fast
closed, the windows made secure, and the house profoundly dark: not
a light being visible in any portion of the building. After some
fruitless ringing at the bells, and beating at the iron gates, they
drew off a few paces to reconnoitre, and confer upon the course it
would be best to take.

Very little conference was needed, when all were bent upon one
desperate purpose, infuriated with liquor, and flushed with
successful riot. The word being given to surround the house, some
climbed the gates, or dropped into the shallow trench and scaled
the garden wall, while others pulled down the solid iron fence, and
while they made a breach to enter by, made deadly weapons of the
bars. The house being completely encircled, a small number of men
were despatched to break open a tool-shed in the garden; and during
their absence on this errand, the remainder contented themselves
with knocking violently at the doors, and calling to those within,
to come down and open them on peril of their lives.

No answer being returned to this repeated summons, and the
detachment who had been sent away, coming back with an accession of
pickaxes, spades, and hoes, they,--together with those who had such
arms already, or carried (as many did) axes, poles, and crowbars,--
struggled into the foremost rank, ready to beset the doors and
windows. They had not at this time more than a dozen lighted
torches among them; but when these preparations were completed,
flaming links were distributed and passed from hand to hand with
such rapidity, that, in a minute's time, at least two-thirds of the
whole roaring mass bore, each man in his hand, a blazing brand.
Whirling these about their heads they raised a loud shout, and fell
to work upon the doors and windows.

Amidst the clattering of heavy blows, the rattling of broken glass,
the cries and execrations of the mob, and all the din and turmoil
of the scene, Hugh and his friends kept together at the turret-door
where Mr Haredale had last admitted him and old John Willet; and
spent their united force on that. It was a strong old oaken door,
guarded by good bolts and a heavy bar, but it soon went crashing in
upon the narrow stairs behind, and made, as it were, a platform to
facilitate their tearing up into the rooms above. Almost at the
same moment, a dozen other points were forced, and at every one the
crowd poured in like water.

A few armed servant-men were posted in the hall, and when the
rioters forced an entrance there, they fired some half-a-dozen
shots. But these taking no effect, and the concourse coming on
like an army of devils, they only thought of consulting their own
safety, and retreated, echoing their assailants' cries, and hoping
in the confusion to be taken for rioters themselves; in which
stratagem they succeeded, with the exception of one old man who was
never heard of again, and was said to have had his brains beaten
out with an iron bar (one of his fellows reported that he had seen
the old man fall), and to have been afterwards burnt in the flames.

The besiegers being now in complete possession of the house, spread
themselves over it from garret to cellar, and plied their demon
labours fiercely. While some small parties kindled bonfires
underneath the windows, others broke up the furniture and cast the
fragments down to feed the flames below; where the apertures in
the wall (windows no longer) were large enough, they threw out
tables, chests of drawers, beds, mirrors, pictures, and flung them
whole into the fire; while every fresh addition to the blazing
masses was received with shouts, and howls, and yells, which added
new and dismal terrors to the conflagration. Those who had axes
and had spent their fury on the movables, chopped and tore down the
doors and window frames, broke up the flooring, hewed away the
rafters, and buried men who lingered in the upper rooms, in heaps
of ruins. Some searched the drawers, the chests, the boxes,
writing-desks, and closets, for jewels, plate, and money; while
others, less mindful of gain and more mad for destruction, cast
their whole contents into the courtyard without examination, and
called to those below, to heap them on the blaze. Men who had
been into the cellars, and had staved the casks, rushed to and fro
stark mad, setting fire to all they saw--often to the dresses of
their own friends--and kindling the building in so many parts that
some had no time for escape, and were seen, with drooping hands and
blackened faces, hanging senseless on the window-sills to which
they had crawled, until they were sucked and drawn into the
burning gulf. The more the fire crackled and raged, the wilder and
more cruel the men grew; as though moving in that element they
became fiends, and changed their earthly nature for the qualities
that give delight in hell.

The burning pile, revealing rooms and passages red hot, through
gaps made in the crumbling walls; the tributary fires that licked
the outer bricks and stones, with their long forked tongues, and
ran up to meet the glowing mass within; the shining of the flames
upon the villains who looked on and fed them; the roaring of the
angry blaze, so bright and high that it seemed in its rapacity to
have swallowed up the very smoke; the living flakes the wind bore
rapidly away and hurried on with, like a storm of fiery snow; the
noiseless breaking of great beams of wood, which fell like feathers
on the heap of ashes, and crumbled in the very act to sparks and
powder; the lurid tinge that overspread the sky, and the darkness,
very deep by contrast, which prevailed around; the exposure to the
coarse, common gaze, of every little nook which usages of home had
made a sacred place, and the destruction by rude hands of every
little household favourite which old associations made a dear and
precious thing: all this taking place--not among pitying looks and
friendly murmurs of compassion, but brutal shouts and exultations,
which seemed to make the very rats who stood by the old house too
long, creatures with some claim upon the pity and regard of those
its roof had sheltered:--combined to form a scene never to be
forgotten by those who saw it and were not actors in the work, so
long as life endured.

And who were they? The alarm-bell rang--and it was pulled by no
faint or hesitating hands--for a long time; but not a soul was
seen. Some of the insurgents said that when it ceased, they heard
the shrieks of women, and saw some garments fluttering in the air,
as a party of men bore away no unresisting burdens. No one could
say that this was true or false, in such an uproar; but where was
Hugh? Who among them had seen him, since the forcing of the doors?
The cry spread through the body. Where was Hugh!

'Here!' he hoarsely cried, appearing from the darkness; out of
breath, and blackened with the smoke. 'We have done all we can;
the fire is burning itself out; and even the corners where it
hasn't spread, are nothing but heaps of ruins. Disperse, my lads,
while the coast's clear; get back by different ways; and meet as
usual!' With that, he disappeared again,--contrary to his wont,
for he was always first to advance, and last to go away,--leaving
them to follow homewards as they would.

It was not an easy task to draw off such a throng. If Bedlam gates
had been flung wide open, there would not have issued forth such
maniacs as the frenzy of that night had made. There were men
there, who danced and trampled on the beds of flowers as though
they trod down human enemies, and wrenched them from the stalks,
like savages who twisted human necks. There were men who cast
their lighted torches in the air, and suffered them to fall upon
their heads and faces, blistering the skin with deep unseemly
burns. There were men who rushed up to the fire, and paddled in it
with their hands as if in water; and others who were restrained by
force from plunging in, to gratify their deadly longing. On the
skull of one drunken lad--not twenty, by his looks--who lay upon
the ground with a bottle to his mouth, the lead from the roof came
streaming down in a shower of liquid fire, white hot; melting his
head like wax. When the scattered parties were collected, men--
living yet, but singed as with hot irons--were plucked out of the
cellars, and carried off upon the shoulders of others, who strove
to wake them as they went along, with ribald jokes, and left them,
dead, in the passages of hospitals. But of all the howling throng
not one learnt mercy from, or sickened at, these sights; nor was
the fierce, besotted, senseless rage of one man glutted.

Slowly, and in small clusters, with hoarse hurrahs and repetitions
of their usual cry, the assembly dropped away. The last few red-
eyed stragglers reeled after those who had gone before; the distant
noise of men calling to each other, and whistling for others whom
they missed, grew fainter and fainter; at length even these sounds
died away, and silence reigned alone.

Silence indeed! The glare of the flames had sunk into a fitful,
flashing light; and the gentle stars, invisible till now, looked
down upon the blackening heap. A dull smoke hung upon the ruin, as
though to hide it from those eyes of Heaven; and the wind forbore
to move it. Bare walls, roof open to the sky--chambers, where the
beloved dead had, many and many a fair day, risen to new life and
energy; where so many dear ones had been sad and merry; which were
connected with so many thoughts and hopes, regrets and changes--all
gone. Nothing left but a dull and dreary blank--a smouldering heap
of dust and ashes--the silence and solitude of utter desolation.

Chapter 56

The Maypole cronies, little drearning of the change so soon to come
upon their favourite haunt, struck through the Forest path upon
their way to London; and avoiding the main road, which was hot and
dusty, kept to the by-paths and the fields. As they drew nearer to
their destination, they began to make inquiries of the people whom
they passed, concerning the riots, and the truth or falsehood of
the stories they had heard. The answers went far beyond any
intelligence that had spread to quiet Chigwell. One man told them
that that afternoon the Guards, conveying to Newgate some rioters
who had been re-examined, had been set upon by the mob and
compelled to retreat; another, that the houses of two witnesses
near Clare Market were about to be pulled down when he came away;
another, that Sir George Saville's house in Leicester Fields was to
be burned that night, and that it would go hard with Sir George if
he fell into the people's hands, as it was he who had brought in
the Catholic bill. All accounts agreed that the mob were out, in
stronger numbers and more numerous parties than had yet appeared;
that the streets were unsafe; that no man's house or life was worth
an hour's purchase; that the public consternation was increasing
every moment; and that many families had already fled the city.
One fellow who wore the popular colour, damned them for not having
cockades in their hats, and bade them set a good watch to-morrow
night upon their prison doors, for the locks would have a
straining; another asked if they were fire-proof, that they
walked abroad without the distinguishing mark of all good and true
men;--and a third who rode on horseback, and was quite alone,
ordered them to throw each man a shilling, in his hat, towards the
support of the rioters. Although they were afraid to refuse
compliance with this demand, and were much alarmed by these
reports, they agreed, having come so far, to go forward, and see
the real state of things with their own eyes. So they pushed on
quicker, as men do who are excited by portentous news; and
ruminating on what they had heard, spoke little to each other.

It was now night, and as they came nearer to the city they had
dismal confirmation of this intelligence in three great fires, all
close together, which burnt fiercely and were gloomily reflected in
the sky. Arriving in the immediate suburbs, they found that almost
every house had chalked upon its door in large characters 'No
Popery,' that the shops were shut, and that alarm and anxiety were
depicted in every face they passed.

Noting these things with a degree of apprehension which neither of
the three cared to impart, in its full extent, to his companions,
they came to a turnpike-gate, which was shut. They were passing
through the turnstile on the path, when a horseman rode up from
London at a hard gallop, and called to the toll-keeper in a voice
of great agitation, to open quickly in the name of God.

The adjuration was so earnest and vehement, that the man, with a
lantern in his hand, came running out--toll-keeper though he was--
and was about to throw the gate open, when happening to look behind
him, he exclaimed, 'Good Heaven, what's that! Another fire!'

At this, the three turned their heads, and saw in the distance--
straight in the direction whence they had come--a broad sheet of
flame, casting a threatening light upon the clouds, which glimmered
as though the conflagration were behind them, and showed like a
wrathful sunset.

'My mind misgives me,' said the horseman, 'or I know from what far
building those flames come. Don't stand aghast, my good fellow.
Open the gate!'

'Sir,' cried the man, laying his hand upon his horse's bridle as he
let him through: 'I know you now, sir; be advised by me; do not go
on. I saw them pass, and know what kind of men they are. You will
be murdered.'

'So be it!' said the horseman, looking intently towards the fire,
and not at him who spoke.

'But sir--sir,' cried the man, grasping at his rein more tightly
yet, 'if you do go on, wear the blue riband. Here, sir,' he added,
taking one from his own hat, 'it's necessity, not choice, that
makes me wear it; it's love of life and home, sir. Wear it for
this one night, sir; only for this one night.'

'Do!' cried the three friends, pressing round his horse. 'Mr
Haredale--worthy sir--good gentleman--pray be persuaded.'

'Who's that?' cried Mr Haredale, stooping down to look. 'Did I
hear Daisy's voice?'

'You did, sir,' cried the little man. 'Do be persuaded, sir. This
gentleman says very true. Your life may hang upon it.'

'Are you,' said Mr Haredale abruptly, 'afraid to come with me?'

'I, sir?--N-n-no.'

'Put that riband in your hat. If we meet the rioters, swear that I
took you prisoner for wearing it. I will tell them so with my own
lips; for as I hope for mercy when I die, I will take no quarter
from them, nor shall they have quarter from me, if we come hand to
hand to-night. Up here--behind me--quick! Clasp me tight round
the body, and fear nothing.'

In an instant they were riding away, at full gallop, in a dense
cloud of dust, and speeding on, like hunters in a dream.

It was well the good horse knew the road he traversed, for never
once--no, never once in all the journey--did Mr Haredale cast his
eyes upon the ground, or turn them, for an instant, from the light
towards which they sped so madly. Once he said in a low voice, 'It
is my house,' but that was the only time he spoke. When they came
to dark and doubtful places, he never forgot to put his hand upon
the little man to hold him more securely in his seat, but he kept
his head erect and his eyes fixed on the fire, then, and always.

The road was dangerous enough, for they went the nearest way--
headlong--far from the highway--by lonely lanes and paths, where
waggon-wheels had worn deep ruts; where hedge and ditch hemmed in
the narrow strip of ground; and tall trees, arching overhead, made
it profoundly dark. But on, on, on, with neither stop nor stumble,
till they reached the Maypole door, and could plainly see that the
fire began to fade, as if for want of fuel.

'Down--for one moment--for but one moment,' said Mr Haredale,
helping Daisy to the ground, and following himself. 'Willet--
Willet--where are my niece and servants--Willet!'

Crying to him distractedly, he rushed into the bar.--The landlord
bound and fastened to his chair; the place dismantled, stripped,
and pulled about his ears;--nobody could have taken shelter here.

He was a strong man, accustomed to restrain himself, and suppress
his strong emotions; but this preparation for what was to follow--
though he had seen that fire burning, and knew that his house must
be razed to the ground--was more than he could bear. He covered
his face with his hands for a moment, and turned away his head.

'Johnny, Johnny,' said Solomon--and the simple-hearted fellow
cried outright, and wrung his hands--'Oh dear old Johnny, here's a
change! That the Maypole bar should come to this, and we should
live to see it! The old Warren too, Johnny--Mr Haredale--oh,
Johnny, what a piteous sight this is!'

Pointing to Mr Haredale as he said these words, little Solomon
Daisy put his elbows on the back of Mr Willet's chair, and fairly
blubbered on his shoulder.

While Solomon was speaking, old John sat, mute as a stock-fish,
staring at him with an unearthly glare, and displaying, by every
possible symptom, entire and complete unconsciousness. But when
Solomon was silent again, John followed,with his great round eyes,
the direction of his looks, and did appear to have some dawning
distant notion that somebody had come to see him.

'You know us, don't you, Johnny?' said the little clerk, rapping
himself on the breast. 'Daisy, you know--Chigwell Church--bell-
ringer--little desk on Sundays--eh, Johnny?'

Mr Willet reflected for a few moments, and then muttered, as it
were mechanically: 'Let us sing to the praise and glory of--'

'Yes, to be sure,' cried the little man, hastily; 'that's it--
that's me, Johnny. You're all right now, an't you? Say you're all
right, Johnny.'

'All right?' pondered Mr Willet, as if that were a matter entirely
between himself and his conscience. 'All right? Ah!'

'They haven't been misusing you with sticks, or pokers, or any
other blunt instruments--have they, Johnny?' asked Solomon, with a
very anxious glance at Mr Willet's head. 'They didn't beat you,
did they?'

John knitted his brow; looked downwards, as if he were mentally
engaged in some arithmetical calculation; then upwards, as if the
total would not come at his call; then at Solomon Daisy, from his
eyebrow to his shoe-buckle; then very slowly round the bar. And
then a great, round, leaden-looking, and not at all transparent
tear, came rolling out of each eye, and he said, as he shook his
head:

'If they'd only had the goodness to murder me, I'd have thanked 'em
kindly.'

'No, no, no, don't say that, Johnny,' whimpered his little friend.
'It's very, very bad, but not quite so bad as that. No, no!'

'Look'ee here, sir!' cried John, turning his rueful eyes on Mr
Haredale, who had dropped on one knee, and was hastily beginning to
untie his bonds. 'Look'ee here, sir! The very Maypole--the old
dumb Maypole--stares in at the winder, as if it said, "John Willet,
John Willet, let's go and pitch ourselves in the nighest pool of
water as is deep enough to hold us; for our day is over!"'

'Don't, Johnny, don't,' cried his friend: no less affected with
this mournful effort of Mr Willet's imagination, than by the
sepulchral tone in which he had spoken of the Maypole. 'Please
don't, Johnny!'

'Your loss is great, and your misfortune a heavy one,' said Mr
Haredale, looking restlessly towards the door: 'and this is not a
time to comfort you. If it were, I am in no condition to do so.
Before I leave you, tell me one thing, and try to tell me plainly,
I implore you. Have you seen, or heard of Emma?'

'No!' said Mr Willet.

'Nor any one but these bloodhounds?'

'No!'

'They rode away, I trust in Heaven, before these dreadful scenes
began,' said Mr Haredale, who, between his agitation, his eagerness
to mount his horse again, and the dexterity with which the cords
were tied, had scarcely yet undone one knot. 'A knife, Daisy!'

'You didn't,' said John, looking about, as though he had lost his
pocket-handkerchief, or some such slight article--'either of you
gentlemen--see a--a coffin anywheres, did you?'

'Willet!' cried Mr Haredale. Solomon dropped the knife, and
instantly becoming limp from head to foot, exclaimed 'Good
gracious!'

'--Because,' said John, not at all regarding them, 'a dead man
called a little time ago, on his way yonder. I could have told you
what name was on the plate, if he had brought his coffin with him,
and left it behind. If he didn't, it don't signify.'

His landlord, who had listened to these words with breathless
attention, started that moment to his feet; and, without a word,
drew Solomon Daisy to the door, mounted his horse, took him up
behind again, and flew rather than galloped towards the pile of
ruins, which that day's sun had shone upon, a stately house. Mr
Willet stared after them, listened, looked down upon himself to
make quite sure that he was still unbound, and, without any
manifestation of impatience, disappointment, or surprise, gently
relapsed into the condition from which he had so imperfectly
recovered.

Mr Haredale tied his horse to the trunk of a tree, and grasping his
companion's arm, stole softly along the footpath, and into what had
been the garden of his house. He stopped for an instant to look
upon its smoking walls, and at the stars that shone through roof
and floor upon the heap of crumbling ashes. Solomon glanced
timidly in his face, but his lips were tightly pressed together, a
resolute and stern expression sat upon his brow, and not a tear, a
look, or gesture indicating grief, escaped him.

He drew his sword; felt for a moment in his breast, as though he
carried other arms about him; then grasping Solomon by the wrist
again, went with a cautious step all round the house. He looked
into every doorway and gap in the wall; retraced his steps at every
rustling of the air among the leaves; and searched in every
shadowed nook with outstretched hands. Thus they made the circuit
of the building: but they returned to the spot from which they had
set out, without encountering any human being, or finding the least
trace of any concealed straggler.

After a short pause, Mr Haredale shouted twice or thrice. Then
cried aloud, 'Is there any one in hiding here, who knows my voice!
There is nothing to fear now. If any of my people are near, I
entreat them to answer!' He called them all by name; his voice was
echoed in many mournful tones; then all was silent as before.

They were standing near the foot of the turret, where the alarm-
bell hung. The fire had raged there, and the floors had been sawn,
and hewn, and beaten down, besides. It was open to the night; but
a part of the staircase still remained, winding upward from a great
mound of dust and cinders. Fragments of the jagged and broken
steps offered an insecure and giddy footing here and there, and
then were lost again, behind protruding angles of the wall, or in
the deep shadows cast upon it by other portions of the ruin; for by
this time the moon had risen, and shone brightly.

As they stood here, listening to the echoes as they died away, and
hoping in vain to hear a voice they knew, some of the ashes in this
turret slipped and rolled down. Startled by the least noise in
that melancholy place, Solomon looked up in his companion's face,
and saw that he had turned towards the spot, and that he watched
and listened keenly.

He covered the little man's mouth with his hand, and looked again.
Instantly, with kindling eyes, he bade him on his life keep still,
and neither speak nor move. Then holding his breath, and stooping
down, he stole into the turret, with his drawn sword in his hand,
and disappeared.

Terrified to be left there by himself, under such desolate
circumstances, and after all he had seen and heard that night,
Solomon would have followed, but there had been something in Mr
Haredale's manner and his look, the recollection of which held him
spellbound. He stood rooted to the spot; and scarcely venturing to
breathe, looked up with mingled fear and wonder.

Again the ashes slipped and rolled--very, very softly--again--and
then again, as though they crumbled underneath the tread of a
stealthy foot. And now a figure was dimly visible; climbing very
softly; and often stopping to look down; now it pursued its
difficult way; and now it was hidden from the view again.

It emerged once more, into the shadowy and uncertain light--higher
now, but not much, for the way was steep and toilsome, and its
progress very slow. What phantom of the brain did he pursue; and
why did he look down so constantly? He knew he was alone. Surely
his mind was not affected by that night's loss and agony. He was
not about to throw himself headlong from the summit of the
tottering wall. Solomon turned sick, and clasped his hands. His
limbs trembled beneath him, and a cold sweat broke out upon his
pallid face.

If he complied with Mr Haredale's last injunction now, it was
because he had not the power to speak or move. He strained his
gaze, and fixed it on a patch of moonlight, into which, if he
continued to ascend, he must soon emerge. When he appeared there,
he would try to call to him.

Again the ashes slipped and crumbled; some stones rolled down, and
fell with a dull, heavy sound upon the ground below. He kept his
eyes upon the piece of moonlight. The figure was coming on, for
its shadow was already thrown upon the wall. Now it appeared--and
now looked round at him--and now--

The horror-stricken clerk uttered a scream that pierced the air,
and cried, 'The ghost! The ghost!'

Long before the echo of his cry had died away, another form rushed
out into the light, flung itself upon the foremost one, knelt down
upon its breast, and clutched its throat with both hands.

'Villain!' cried Mr Haredale, in a terrible voice--for it was he.
'Dead and buried, as all men supposed through your infernal arts,
but reserved by Heaven for this--at last--at last I have you. You,
whose hands are red with my brother's blood, and that of his
faithful servant, shed to conceal your own atrocious guilt--You,
Rudge, double murderer and monster, I arrest you in the name of
God, who has delivered you into my hands. No. Though you had the
strength of twenty men,' he added, as the murderer writhed and
struggled, you could not escape me or loosen my grasp to-night!'

Chapter 57

Barnaby, armed as we have seen, continued to pace up and down
before the stable-door; glad to be alone again, and heartily
rejoicing in the unaccustomed silence and tranquillity. After the
whirl of noise and riot in which the last two days had been passed,
the pleasures of solitude and peace were enhanced a thousandfold.
He felt quite happy; and as he leaned upon his staff and mused, a
bright smile overspread his face, and none but cheerful visions
floated into his brain.

Had he no thoughts of her, whose sole delight he was, and whom he
had unconsciously plunged in such bitter sorrow and such deep
affliction? Oh, yes. She was at the heart of all his cheerful
hopes and proud reflections. It was she whom all this honour and
distinction were to gladden; the joy and profit were for her. What
delight it gave her to hear of the bravery of her poor boy! Ah!
He would have known that, without Hugh's telling him. And what a
precious thing it was to know she lived so happily, and heard with
so much pride (he pictured to himself her look when they told her)
that he was in such high esteem: bold among the boldest, and
trusted before them all! And when these frays were over, and the
good lord had conquered his enemies, and they were all at peace
again, and he and she were rich, what happiness they would have in
talking of these troubled times when he was a great soldier: and
when they sat alone together in the tranquil twilight, and she had
no longer reason to be anxious for the morrow, what pleasure would
he have in the reflection that this was his doing--his--poor
foolish Barnaby's; and in patting her on the cheek, and saying with
a merry laugh, 'Am I silly now, mother--am I silly now?'

With a lighter heart and step, and eyes the brighter for the happy
tear that dimmed them for a moment, Barnaby resumed his walk; and
singing gaily to himself, kept guard upon his quiet post.

His comrade Grip, the partner of his watch, though fond of basking
in the sunshine, preferred to-day to walk about the stable; having
a great deal to do in the way of scattering the straw, hiding under
it such small articles as had been casually left about, and
haunting Hugh's bed, to which he seemed to have taken a particular
attachment. Sometimes Barnaby looked in and called him, and then
he came hopping out; but he merely did this as a concession to his
master's weakness, and soon returned again to his own grave
pursuits: peering into the straw with his bill, and rapidly
covering up the place, as if, Midas-like, he were whispering
secrets to the earth and burying them; constantly busying himself
upon the sly; and affecting, whenever Barnaby came past, to look up
in the clouds and have nothing whatever on his mind: in short,
conducting himself, in many respects, in a more than usually
thoughtful, deep, and mysterious manner.

As the day crept on, Barnaby, who had no directions forbidding him
to eat and drink upon his post, but had been, on the contrary,
supplied with a bottle of beer and a basket of provisions,
determined to break his fast, which he had not done since morning.
To this end, he sat down on the ground before the door, and putting
his staff across his knees in case of alarm or surprise, summoned
Grip to dinner.

This call, the bird obeyed with great alacrity; crying, as he
sidled up to his master, 'I'm a devil, I'm a Polly, I'm a kettle,
I'm a Protestant, No Popery!' Having learnt this latter sentiment
from the gentry among whom he had lived of late, he delivered it
with uncommon emphasis.

'Well said, Grip!' cried his master, as he fed him with the
daintiest bits. 'Well said, old boy!'

'Never say die, bow wow wow, keep up your spirits, Grip Grip Grip,
Holloa! We'll all have tea, I'm a Protestant kettle, No Popery!'
cried the raven.

'Gordon for ever, Grip!' cried Barnaby.

The raven, placing his head upon the ground, looked at his master
sideways, as though he would have said, 'Say that again!'
Perfectly understanding his desire, Barnaby repeated the phrase a
great many times. The bird listened with profound attention;
sometimes repeating the popular cry in a low voice, as if to
compare the two, and try if it would at all help him to this new
accomplishment; sometimes flapping his wings, or barking; and
sometimes in a kind of desperation drawing a multitude of corks,
with extraordinary viciousness.

Barnaby was so intent upon his favourite, that he was not at first
aware of the approach of two persons on horseback, who were riding
at a foot-pace, and coming straight towards his post. When he
perceived them, however, which he did when they were within some
fifty yards of him, he jumped hastily up, and ordering Grip within
doors, stood with both hands on his staff, waiting until he should
know whether they were friends or foes.

He had hardly done so, when he observed that those who advanced
were a gentleman and his servant; almost at the same moment he
recognised Lord George Gordon, before whom he stood uncovered, with
his eyes turned towards the ground.

'Good day!' said Lord George, not reining in his horse until he was
close beside him. 'Well!'

'All quiet, sir, all safe!' cried Barnaby. 'The rest are away--
they went by that path--that one. A grand party!'

'Ay?' said Lord George, looking thoughtfully at him. 'And you?'

'Oh! They left me here to watch--to mount guard--to keep
everything secure till they come back. I'll do it, sir, for your
sake. You're a good gentleman; a kind gentleman--ay, you are.
There are many against you, but we'll be a match for them, never
fear!'

'What's that?' said Lord George--pointing to the raven who was
peeping out of the stable-door--but still looking thoughtfully, and
in some perplexity, it seemed, at Barnaby.

'Why, don't you know!' retorted Barnaby, with a wondering laugh.
'Not know what HE is! A bird, to be sure. My bird--my friend--
Grip.'

'A devil, a kettle, a Grip, a Polly, a Protestant, no Popery!'
cried the raven.

'Though, indeed,' added Barnaby, laying his hand upon the neck of
Lord George's horse, and speaking softly: 'you had good reason to
ask me what he is, for sometimes it puzzles me--and I am used to
him--to think he's only a bird. He's my brother, Grip is--always
with me--always talking--always merry--eh, Grip?'

The raven answered by an affectionate croak, and hopping on his
master's arm, which he held downward for that purpose, submitted
with an air of perfect indifference to be fondled, and turned his
restless, curious eye, now upon Lord George, and now upon his man.

Lord George, biting his nails in a discomfited manner, regarded
Barnaby for some time in silence; then beckoning to his servant,
said:

'Come hither, John.'

John Grueby touched his hat, and came.

'Have you ever seen this young man before?' his master asked in a
low voice.

'Twice, my lord,' said John. 'I saw him in the crowd last night
and Saturday.'

'Did--did it seem to you that his manner was at all wild or
strange?' Lord George demanded, faltering.

'Mad,' said John, with emphatic brevity.

'And why do you think him mad, sir?' said his master, speaking in a
peevish tone. 'Don't use that word too freely. Why do you think
him mad?'

'My lord,' John Grueby answered, 'look at his dress, look at his
eyes, look at his restless way, hear him cry "No Popery!" Mad, my
lord.'

'So because one man dresses unlike another,' returned his angry
master, glancing at himself; 'and happens to differ from other men
in his carriage and manner, and to advocate a great cause which the
corrupt and irreligious desert, he is to be accounted mad, is he?'

'Stark, staring, raving, roaring mad, my lord,' returned the
unmoved John.

'Do you say this to my face?' cried his master, turning sharply
upon him.

'To any man, my lord, who asks me,' answered John.

'Mr Gashford, I find, was right,' said Lord George; 'I thought him
prejudiced, though I ought to have known a man like him better than
to have supposed it possible!'

'I shall never have Mr Gashford's good word, my lord,' replied
John, touching his hat respectfully, 'and I don't covet it.'

'You are an ill-conditioned, most ungrateful fellow,' said Lord
George: 'a spy, for anything I know. Mr Gashford is perfectly
correct, as I might have felt convinced he was. I have done wrong
to retain you in my service. It is a tacit insult to him as my
choice and confidential friend to do so, remembering the cause you
sided with, on the day he was maligned at Westminster. You will
leave me to-night--nay, as soon as we reach home. The sooner the
better.'

'If it comes to that, I say so too, my lord. Let Mr Gashford have
his will. As to my being a spy, my lord, you know me better than
to believe it, I am sure. I don't know much about causes. My
cause is the cause of one man against two hundred; and I hope it
always will be.'

'You have said quite enough,' returned Lord George, motioning him
to go back. 'I desire to hear no more.'

'If you'll let me have another word, my lord,' returned John
Grueby, 'I'd give this silly fellow a caution not to stay here by
himself. The proclamation is in a good many hands already, and
it's well known that he was concerned in the business it relates
to. He had better get to a place of safety if he can, poor
creature.'

'You hear what this man says?' cried Lord George, addressing
Barnaby, who had looked on and wondered while this dialogue passed.
'He thinks you may be afraid to remain upon your post, and are kept
here perhaps against your will. What do you say?'

'I think, young man,' said John, in explanation, 'that the soldiers
may turn out and take you; and that if they do, you will certainly
be hung by the neck till you're dead--dead--dead. And I think you
had better go from here, as fast as you can. That's what I think.'

'He's a coward, Grip, a coward!' cried Barnaby, putting the raven
on the ground, and shouldering his staff. 'Let them come! Gordon
for ever! Let them come!'

'Ay!' said Lord George, 'let them! Let us see who will venture to
attack a power like ours; the solemn league of a whole people.
THIS a madman! You have said well, very well. I am proud to be
the leader of such men as you.'

Bamaby's heart swelled within his bosom as he heard these words.
He took Lord George's hand and carried it to his lips; patted his
horse's crest, as if the affection and admiration he had conceived
for the man extended to the animal he rode; then unfurling his
flag, and proudly waving it, resumed his pacing up and down.

Lord George, with a kindling eye and glowing cheek, took off his
hat, and flourishing it above his head, bade him exultingly
Farewell!--then cantered off at a brisk pace; after glancing
angrily round to see that his servant followed. Honest John set
spurs to his horse and rode after his master, but not before he had
again warned Barnaby to retreat, with many significant gestures,
which indeed he continued to make, and Barnaby to resist, until the
windings of the road concealed them from each other's view.

Left to himself again with a still higher sense of the importance
of his post, and stimulated to enthusiasm by the special notice and
encouragement of his leader, Barnaby walked to and fro in a
delicious trance rather than as a waking man. The sunshine which
prevailed around was in his mind. He had but one desire
ungratified. If she could only see him now!

The day wore on; its heat was gently giving place to the cool of
evening; a light wind sprung up, fanning his long hair, and making
the banner rustle pleasantly above his head. There was a freedom
and freshness in the sound and in the time, which chimed exactly
with his mood. He was happier than ever.

He was leaning on his staff looking towards the declining sun, and
reflecting with a smile that he stood sentinel at that moment over
buried gold, when two or three figures appeared in the distance,
making towards the house at a rapid pace, and motioning with their
hands as though they urged its inmates to retreat from some
approaching danger. As they drew nearer, they became more earnest
in their gestures; and they were no sooner within hearing, than the
foremost among them cried that the soldiers were coming up.

At these words, Barnaby furled his flag, and tied it round the
pole. His heart beat high while he did so, but he had no more fear
or thought of retreating than the pole itself. The friendly
stragglers hurried past him, after giving him notice of his danger,
and quickly passed into the house, where the utmost confusion
immediately prevailed. As those within hastily closed the windows
and the doors, they urged him by looks and signs to fly without
loss of time, and called to him many times to do so; but he only
shook his head indignantly in answer, and stood the firmer on his
post. Finding that he was not to be persuaded, they took care of
themselves; and leaving the place with only one old woman in it,
speedily withdrew.

As yet there had been no symptom of the news having any better
foundation than in the fears of those who brought it, but The Boot
had not been deserted five minutes, when there appeared, coming
across the fields, a body of men who, it was easy to see, by the
glitter of their arms and ornaments in the sun, and by their
orderly and regular mode of advancing--for they came on as one
man--were soldiers. In a very little time, Barnaby knew that they
were a strong detachment of the Foot Guards, having along with them
two gentlemen in private clothes, and a small party of Horse; the
latter brought up the rear, and were not in number more than six or
eight.

They advanced steadily; neither quickening their pace as they came
nearer, nor raising any cry, nor showing the least emotion or
anxiety. Though this was a matter of course in the case of regular
troops, even to Barnaby, there was something particularly
impressive and disconcerting in it to one accustomed to the noise
and tumult of an undisciplined mob. For all that, he stood his
ground not a whit the less resolutely, and looked on undismayed.

Presently, they marched into the yard, and halted. The
commanding-officer despatched a messenger to the horsemen, one of
whom came riding back. Some words passed between them, and they
glanced at Barnaby; who well remembered the man he had unhorsed at
Westminster, and saw him now before his eyes. The man being
speedily dismissed, saluted, and rode back to his comrades, who
were drawn up apart at a short distance.

The officer then gave the word to prime and load. The heavy
ringing of the musket-stocks upon the ground, and the sharp and
rapid rattling of the ramrods in their barrels, were a kind of
relief to Batnahy, deadly though he knew the purport of such sounds
to be. When this was done, other commands were given, and the
soldiers instantaneously formed in single file all round the house
and stables; completely encircling them in every part, at a
distance, perhaps, of some half-dozen yards; at least that seemed
in Barnaby's eyes to be about the space left between himself and
those who confronted him. The horsemen remained drawn up by
themselves as before.

The two gentlemen in private clothes who had kept aloof, now rode
forward, one on either side the officer. The proclamation having
been produced and read by one of them, the officer called on
Barnaby to surrender.

He made no answer, but stepping within the door, before which he
had kept guard, held his pole crosswise to protect it. In the
midst of a profound silence, he was again called upon to yield.

Still he offered no reply. Indeed he had enough to do, to run his
eye backward and forward along the half-dozen men who immediately
fronted him, and settle hurriedly within himself at which of them
he would strike first, when they pressed on him. He caught the eye
of one in the centre, and resolved to hew that fellow down, though
he died for it.

Again there was a dead silence, and again the same voice called
upon him to deliver himself up.

Next moment he was back in the stable, dealing blows about him like
a madman. Two of the men lay stretched at his feet: the one he
had marked, dropped first--he had a thought for that, even in the
hot blood and hurry of the struggle. Another blow--another! Down,
mastered, wounded in the breast by a heavy blow from the butt-end
of a gun (he saw the weapon in the act of falling)--breathless--and
a prisoner.

An exclamation of surprise from the officer recalled him, in some
degree, to himself. He looked round. Grip, after working in
secret all the afternoon, and with redoubled vigour while
everybody's attention was distracted, had plucked away the straw
from Hugh's bed, and turned up the loose ground with his iron bill.
The hole had been recklessly filled to the brim, and was merely
sprinkled with earth. Golden cups, spoons, candlesticks, coined
guineas--all the riches were revealed.

They brought spades and a sack; dug up everything that was hidden
there; and carried away more than two men could lift. They
handcuffed him and bound his arms, searched him, and took away all
he had. Nobody questioned or reproached him, or seemed to have
much curiosity about him. The two men he had stunned, were carried
off by their companions in the same business-like way in which
everything else was done. Finally, he was left under a guard of
four soldiers with fixed bayonets, while the officer directed in
person the search of the house and the other buildings connected
with it.

This was soon completed. The soldiers formed again in the yard; he
was marched out, with his guard about him; and ordered to fall in,
where a space was left. The others closed up all round, and so
they moved away, with the prisoner in the centre.

When they came into the streets, he felt he was a sight; and
looking up as they passed quickly along, could see people running
to the windows a little too late, and throwing up the sashes to
look after him. Sometimes he met a staring face beyond the heads
about him, or under the arms of his conductors, or peering down
upon him from a waggon-top or coach-box; but this was all he saw,
being surrounded by so many men. The very noises of the streets
seemed muffled and subdued; and the air came stale and hot upon
him, like the sickly breath of an oven.

Tramp, tramp. Tramp, tramp. Heads erect, shoulders square, every
man stepping in exact time--all so orderly and regular--nobody
looking at him--nobody seeming conscious of his presence,--he could
hardly believe he was a Prisoner. But at the word, though only
thought, not spoken, he felt the handcuffs galling his wrists, the
cord pressing his arms to his sides: the loaded guns levelled at
his head; and those cold, bright, sharp, shining points turned
towards him: the mere looking down at which, now that he was bound
and helpless, made the warm current of his life run cold.

Chapter 58

They were not long in reaching the barracks, for the officer who
commanded the party was desirous to avoid rousing the people by the
display of military force in the streets, and was humanely anxious
to give as little opportunity as possible for any attempt at
rescue; knowing that it must lead to bloodshed and loss of life,
and that if the civil authorities by whom he was accompanied,
empowered him to order his men to fire, many innocent persons would
probably fall, whom curiosity or idleness had attracted to the
spot. He therefore led the party briskly on, avoiding with a
merciful prudence the more public and crowded thoroughfares, and
pursuing those which he deemed least likely to be infested by
disorderly persons. This wise proceeding not only enabled them to
gain their quarters without any interruption, but completely
baffled a body of rioters who had assembled in one of the main
streets, through which it was considered certain they would pass,
and who remained gathered together for the purpose of releasing the
prisoner from their hands, long after they had deposited him in a
place of security, closed the barrack-gates, and set a double guard
at every entrance for its better protection.

Arrived at this place, poor Barnaby was marched into a stone-
floored room, where there was a very powerful smell of tobacco, a
strong thorough draught of air, and a great wooden bedstead, large
enough for a score of men. Several soldiers in undress were
lounging about, or eating from tin cans; military accoutrements
dangled on rows of pegs along the whitewashed wall; and some half-
dozen men lay fast asleep upon their backs, snoring in concert.
After remaining here just long enough to note these things, he was
marched out again, and conveyed across the parade-ground to another
portion of the building.

Perhaps a man never sees so much at a glance as when he is in a
situation of extremity. The chances are a hundred to one, that if
Barnaby had lounged in at the gate to look about him, he would have
lounged out again with a very imperfect idea of the place, and
would have remembered very little about it. But as he was taken
handcuffed across the gravelled area, nothing escaped his notice.
The dry, arid look of the dusty square, and of the bare brick
building; the clothes hanging at some of the windows; and the men
in their shirt-sleeves and braces, lolling with half their bodies
out of the others; the green sun-blinds at the officers' quarters,
and the little scanty trees in front; the drummer-boys practising
in a distant courtyard; the men at drill on the parade; the two
soldiers carrying a basket between them, who winked to each other
as he went by, and slily pointed to their throats; the spruce
serjeant who hurried past with a cane in his hand, and under his
arm a clasped book with a vellum cover; the fellows in the ground-
floor rooms, furbishing and brushing up their different articles of
dress, who stopped to look at him, and whose voices as they spoke
together echoed loudly through the empty galleries and passages;--
everything, down to the stand of muskets before the guard-house,
and the drum with a pipe-clayed belt attached, in one corner,
impressed itself upon his observation, as though he had noticed
them in the same place a hundred times, or had been a whole day
among them, in place of one brief hurried minute.

He was taken into a small paved back yard, and there they opened a
great door, plated with iron, and pierced some five feet above the
ground with a few holes to let in air and light. Into this dungeon
he was walked straightway; and having locked him up there, and
placed a sentry over him, they left him to his meditations.

The cell, or black hole, for it had those words painted on the
door, was very dark, and having recently accommodated a drunken
deserter, by no means clean. Barnaby felt his way to some straw at
the farther end, and looking towards the door, tried to accustom
himself to the gloom, which, coming from the bright sunshine out of
doors, was not an easy task.

There was a kind of portico or colonnade outside, and this
obstructed even the little light that at the best could have found
its way through the small apertures in the door. The footsteps of
the sentinel echoed monotonously as he paced its stone pavement to
and fro (reminding Barnaby of the watch he had so lately kept
himself); and as he passed and repassed the door, he made the cell
for an instant so black by the interposition of his body, that his
going away again seemed like the appearance of a new ray of light,
and was quite a circumstance to look for.

When the prisoner had sat sometime upon the ground, gazing at the
chinks, and listening to the advancing and receding footsteps of
his guard, the man stood still upon his post. Barnaby, quite
unable to think, or to speculate on what would be done with him,
had been lulled into a kind of doze by his regular pace; but his
stopping roused him; and then he became aware that two men were in
conversation under the colonnade, and very near the door of his
cell.

How long they had been talking there, he could not tell, for he had
fallen into an unconsciousness of his real position, and when the
footsteps ceased, was answering aloud some question which seemed to
have been put to him by Hugh in the stable, though of the fancied
purport, either of question or reply, notwithstanding that he awoke
with the latter on his lips, he had no recollection whatever. The
first words that reached his ears, were these:

'Why is he brought here then, if he has to be taken away again so
soon?'

'Why where would you have him go! Damme, he's not as safe anywhere
as among the king's troops, is he? What WOULD you do with him?
Would you hand him over to a pack of cowardly civilians, that shake
in their shoes till they wear the soles out, with trembling at the
threats of the ragamuffins he belongs to?'

'That's true enough.'

'True enough!--I'll tell you what. I wish, Tom Green, that I was a
commissioned instead of a non-commissioned officer, and that I had
the command of two companies--only two companies--of my own
regiment. Call me out to stop these riots--give me the needful
authority, and half-a-dozen rounds of ball cartridge--'

'Ay!' said the other voice. 'That's all very well, but they won't
give the needful authority. If the magistrate won't give the
word, what's the officer to do?'

Not very well knowing, as it seemed, how to overcome this
difficulty, the other man contented himself with damning the
magistrates.

'With all my heart,' said his friend.

'Where's the use of a magistrate?' returned the other voice.
'What's a magistrate in this case, but an impertinent, unnecessary,
unconstitutional sort of interference? Here's a proclamation.
Here's a man referred to in that proclamation. Here's proof
against him, and a witness on the spot. Damme! Take him out and
shoot him, sir. Who wants a magistrate?'

'When does he go before Sir John Fielding?' asked the man who had
spoken first.

'To-night at eight o'clock,' returned the other. 'Mark what
follows. The magistrate commits him to Newgate. Our people take
him to Newgate. The rioters pelt our people. Our people retire
before the rioters. Stones are thrown, insults are offered, not a
shot's fired. Why? Because of the magistrates. Damn the
magistrates!'

When he had in some degree relieved his mind by cursing the
magistrates in various other forms of speech, the man was silent,
save for a low growling, still having reference to those
authorities, which from time to time escaped him.

Barnaby, who had wit enough to know that this conversation
concerned, and very nearly concerned, himself, remained perfectly
quiet until they ceased to speak, when he groped his way to the
door, and peeping through the air-holes, tried to make out what
kind of men they were, to whom he had been listening.

The one who condemned the civil power in such strong terms, was a
serjeant--engaged just then, as the streaming ribands in his cap
announced, on the recruiting service. He stood leaning sideways
against a pillar nearly opposite the door, and as he growled to
himself, drew figures on the pavement with his cane. The other
man had his back towards the dungeon, and Barnaby could only see
his form. To judge from that, he was a gallant, manly, handsome
fellow, but he had lost his left arm. It had been taken off
between the elbow and the shoulder, and his empty coat-sleeve hung
across his breast.

It was probably this circumstance which gave him an interest beyond
any that his companion could boast of, and attracted Barnaby's
attention. There was something soldierly in his bearing, and he
wore a jaunty cap and jacket. Perhaps he had been in the service
at one time or other. If he had, it could not have been very long
ago, for he was but a young fellow now.

'Well, well,' he said thoughtfully; 'let the fault be where it may,
it makes a man sorrowful to come back to old England, and see her
in this condition.'

'I suppose the pigs will join 'em next,' said the serjeant, with an
imprecation on the rioters, 'now that the birds have set 'em the
example.'

'The birds!' repeated Tom Green.

'Ah--birds,' said the serjeant testily; 'that's English, an't it?'

'I don't know what you mean.'

'Go to the guard-house, and see. You'll find a bird there, that's
got their cry as pat as any of 'em, and bawls "No Popery," like a
man--or like a devil, as he says he is. I shouldn't wonder. The
devil's loose in London somewhere. Damme if I wouldn't twist his
neck round, on the chance, if I had MY way.'

The young man had taken two or three steps away, as if to go and
see this creature, when he was arrested by the voice of Barnaby.

'It's mine,' he called out, half laughing and half weeping--'my
pet, my friend Grip. Ha ha ha! Don't hurt him, he has done no
harm. I taught him; it's my fault. Let me have him, if you
please. He's the only friend I have left now. He'll not dance, or
talk, or whistle for you, I know; but he will for me, because he
knows me and loves me--though you wouldn't think it--very well.
You wouldn't hurt a bird, I'm sure. You're a brave soldier, sir,
and wouldn't harm a woman or a child--no, no, nor a poor bird, I'm
certain.'

This latter adjuration was addressed to the serjeant, whom Barnaby
judged from his red coat to be high in office, and able to seal
Grip's destiny by a word. But that gentleman, in reply, surlily
damned him for a thief and rebel as he was, and with many
disinterested imprecations on his own eyes, liver, blood, and body,
assured him that if it rested with him to decide, he would put a
final stopper on the bird, and his master too.

'You talk boldly to a caged man,' said Barnaby, in anger. 'If I
was on the other side of the door and there were none to part us,
you'd change your note--ay, you may toss your head--you would!
Kill the bird--do. Kill anything you can, and so revenge yourself
on those who with their bare hands untied could do as much to you!'

Having vented his defiance, he flung himself into the furthest
corner of his prison, and muttering, 'Good bye, Grip--good bye,
dear old Grip!' shed tears for the first time since he had been
taken captive; and hid his face in the straw.

He had had some fancy at first, that the one-armed man would help
him, or would give him a kind word in answer. He hardly knew why,
but he hoped and thought so. The young fellow had stopped when he
called out, and checking himself in the very act of turning round,
stood listening to every word he said. Perhaps he built his feeble
trust on this; perhaps on his being young, and having a frank and
honest manner. However that might be, he built on sand. The other
went away directly he had finished speaking, and neither answered
him, nor returned. No matter. They were all against him here: he
might have known as much. Good bye, old Grip, good bye!

After some time, they came and unlocked the door, and called to him
to come out. He rose directly, and complied, for he would not have
THEM think he was subdued or frightened. He walked out like a man,
and looked from face to face.

None of them returned his gaze or seemed to notice it. They
marched him back to the parade by the way they had brought him, and
there they halted, among a body of soldiers, at least twice as
numerous as that which had taken him prisoner in the afternoon.
The officer he had seen before, bade him in a few brief words take
notice that if he attempted to escape, no matter how favourable a
chance he might suppose he had, certain of the men had orders to
fire upon him, that moment. They then closed round him as before,
and marched him off again.

In the same unbroken order they arrived at Bow Street, followed and
beset on all sides by a crowd which was continually increasing.
Here he was placed before a blind gentleman, and asked if he wished
to say anything. Not he. What had he got to tell them? After a
very little talking, which he was careless of and quite indifferent
to, they told him he was to go to Newgate, and took him away.

He went out into the street, so surrounded and hemmed in on every
side by soldiers, that he could see nothing; but he knew there was
a great crowd of people, by the murmur; and that they were not
friendly to the soldiers, was soon rendered evident by their yells
and hisses. How often and how eagerly he listened for the voice of
Hugh! There was not a voice he knew among them all. Was Hugh a
prisoner too? Was there no hope!

As they came nearer and nearer to the prison, the hootings of the
people grew more violent; stones were thrown; and every now and
then, a rush was made against the soldiers, which they staggered
under. One of them, close before him, smarting under a blow upon
the temple, levelled his musket, but the officer struck it upwards
with his sword, and ordered him on peril of his life to desist.
This was the last thing he saw with any distinctness, for directly
afterwards he was tossed about, and beaten to and fro, as though in
a tempestuous sea. But go where he would, there were the same
guards about him. Twice or thrice he was thrown down, and so were
they; but even then, he could not elude their vigilance for a
moment. They were up again, and had closed about him, before he,
with his wrists so tightly bound, could scramble to his feet.
Fenced in, thus, he felt himself hoisted to the top of a low flight
of steps, and then for a moment he caught a glimpse of the fighting
in the crowd, and of a few red coats sprinkled together, here and
there, struggling to rejoin their fellows. Next moment, everything
was dark and gloomy, and he was standing in the prison lobby; the
centre of a group of men.

A smith was speedily in attendance, who riveted upon him a set of
heavy irons. Stumbling on as well as he could, beneath the unusual
burden of these fetters, he was conducted to a strong stone cell,
where, fastening the door with locks, and bolts, and chains, they
left him, well secured; having first, unseen by him, thrust in
Grip, who, with his head drooping and his deep black plumes rough
and rumpled, appeared to comprehend and to partake, his master's
fallen fortunes.

Chapter 59

It is necessary at this juncture to return to Hugh, who, having, as
we have seen, called to the rioters to disperse from about the
Warren, and meet again as usual, glided back into the darkness from
which he had emerged, and reappeared no more that night.

He paused in the copse which sheltered him from the observation of
his mad companions, and waited to ascertain whether they drew off
at his bidding, or still lingered and called to him to join them.
Some few, he saw, were indisposed to go away without him, and made
towards the spot where he stood concealed as though they were about
to follow in his footsteps, and urge him to come back; but these
men, being in their turn called to by their friends, and in truth
not greatly caring to venture into the dark parts of the grounds,
where they might be easily surprised and taken, if any of the
neighbours or retainers of the family were watching them from among
the trees, soon abandoned the idea, and hastily assembling such men
as they found of their mind at the moment, straggled off.

When he was satisfied that the great mass of the insurgents were
imitating this example, and that the ground was rapidly clearing,
he plunged into the thickest portion of the little wood; and,
crashing the branches as he went, made straight towards a distant
light: guided by that, and by the sullen glow of the fire behind
him.

As he drew nearer and nearer to the twinkling beacon towards which
he bent his course, the red glare of a few torches began to reveal
itself, and the voices of men speaking together in a subdued tone
broke the silence which, save for a distant shouting now and then,
already prevailed. At length he cleared the wood, and, springing
across a ditch, stood in a dark lane, where a small body of ill-
looking vagabonds, whom he had left there some twenty minutes
before, waited his coming with impatience.

They were gathered round an old post-chaise or chariot, driven by
one of themselves, who sat postilion-wise upon the near horse. The
blinds were drawn up, and Mr Tappertit and Dennis kept guard at the
two windows. The former assumed the command of the party, for he
challenged Hugh as he advanced towards them; and when he did so,
those who were resting on the ground about the carriage rose to
their feet and clustered round him.

'Well!' said Simon, in a low voice; 'is all right?'

'Right enough,' replied Hugh, in the same tone. 'They're
dispersing now--had begun before I came away.'

'And is the coast clear?'

'Clear enough before our men, I take it,' said Hugh. 'There are
not many who, knowing of their work over yonder, will want to
meddle with 'em to-night.--Who's got some drink here?'

Everybody had some plunder from the cellar; half-a-dozen flasks and
bottles were offered directly. He selected the largest, and
putting it to his mouth, sent the wine gurgling down his throat.
Having emptied it, he threw it down, and stretched out his hand for
another, which he emptied likewise, at a draught. Another was
given him, and this he half emptied too. Reserving what remained
to finish with, he asked:

'Have you got anything to eat, any of you? I'm as ravenous as a
hungry wolf. Which of you was in the larder--come?'

'I was, brother,' said Dennis, pulling off his hat, and fumbling in
the crown. 'There's a matter of cold venison pasty somewhere or
another here, if that'll do.'

'Do!' cried Hugh, seating himself on the pathway. 'Bring it out!
Quick! Show a light here, and gather round! Let me sup in state,
my lads! Ha ha ha!'

Entering into his boisterous humour, for they all had drunk deeply,
and were as wild as he, they crowded about him, while two of their
number who had torches, held them up, one on either side of him,
that his banquet might not be despatched in the dark. Mr Dennis,
having by this time succeeded in extricating from his hat a great
mass of pasty, which had been wedged in so tightly that it was not
easily got out, put it before him; and Hugh, having borrowed a
notched and jagged knife from one of the company, fell to work upon
it vigorously.

'I should recommend you to swallow a little fire every day, about
an hour afore dinner, brother,' said Dennis, after a pause. 'It
seems to agree with you, and to stimulate your appetite.'

Hugh looked at him, and at the blackened faces by which he was
surrounded, and, stopping for a moment to flourish his knife above
his head, answered with a roar of laughter.

'Keep order, there, will you?' said Simon Tappertit.

'Why, isn't a man allowed to regale himself, noble captain,'
retorted his lieutenant, parting the men who stood between them,
with his knife, that he might see him,--'to regale himself a little
bit after such work as mine? What a hard captain! What a strict
captain! What a tyrannical captain! Ha ha ha!'

'I wish one of you fellers would hold a bottle to his mouth to keep
him quiet,' said Simon, 'unless you want the military to be down
upon us.'

'And what if they are down upon us!' retorted Hugh. 'Who cares?
Who's afraid? Let 'em come, I say, let 'em come. The more, the
merrier. Give me bold Barnaby at my side, and we two will settle
the military, without troubling any of you. Barnaby's the man for
the military. Barnaby's health!'

But as the majority of those present were by no means anxious for
a second engagement that night, being already weary and exhausted,
they sided with Mr Tappertit, and pressed him to make haste with
his supper, for they had already delayed too long. Knowing, even
in the height of his frenzy, that they incurred great danger by
lingering so near the scene of the late outrages, Hugh made an end
of his meal without more remonstrance, and rising, stepped up to Mr
Tappertit, and smote him on the back.

'Now then,' he cried, 'I'm ready. There are brave birds inside
this cage, eh? Delicate birds,--tender, loving, little doves. I
caged 'em--I caged 'em--one more peep!'

He thrust the little man aside as he spoke, and mounting on the
steps, which were half let down, pulled down the blind by force,
and stared into the chaise like an ogre into his larder.

'Ha ha ha! and did you scratch, and pinch, and struggle, pretty
mistress?' he cried, as he grasped a little hand that sought in
vain to free itself from his grip: 'you, so bright-eyed, and
cherry-lipped, and daintily made? But I love you better for it,
mistress. Ay, I do. You should stab me and welcome, so that it
pleased you, and you had to cure me afterwards. I love to see you
proud and scornful. It makes you handsomer than ever; and who so
handsome as you at any time, my pretty one!'

'Come!' said Mr Tappertit, who had waited during this speech with
considerable impatience. 'There's enough of that. Come down.'

The little hand seconded this admonition by thrusting Hugh's great
head away with all its force, and drawing up the blind, amidst his
noisy laughter, and vows that he must have another look, for the
last glimpse of that sweet face had provoked him past all bearing.
However, as the suppressed impatience of the party now broke out
into open murmurs, he abandoned this design, and taking his seat
upon the bar, contented himself with tapping at the front windows
of the carriage, and trying to steal a glance inside; Mr Tappertit,
mounting the steps and hanging on by the door, issued his
directions to the driver with a commanding voice and attitude; the
rest got up behind, or ran by the side of the carriage, as they
could; some, in imitation of Hugh, endeavoured to see the face he
had praised so highly, and were reminded of their impertinence by
hints from the cudgel of Mr Tappertit. Thus they pursued their
journey by circuitous and winding roads; preserving, except when
they halted to take breath, or to quarrel about the best way of
reaching London, pretty good order and tolerable silence.

In the mean time, Dolly--beautiful, bewitching, captivating little
Dolly--her hair dishevelled, her dress torn, her dark eyelashes wet
with tears, her bosom heaving--her face, now pale with fear, now
crimsoned with indignation--her whole self a hundred times more
beautiful in this heightened aspect than ever she had been before--
vainly strove to comfort Emma Haredale, and to impart to her the
consolation of which she stood in so much need herself. The
soldiers were sure to come; they must be rescued; it would be
impossible to convey them through the streets of London when they
set the threats of their guards at defiance, and shrieked to the
passengers for help. If they did this when they came into the more
frequented ways, she was certain--she was quite certain--they must
be released. So poor Dolly said, and so poor Dolly tried to think;
but the invariable conclusion of all such arguments was, that Dolly
burst into tears; cried, as she wrung her hands, what would they do
or think, or who would comfort them, at home, at the Golden Key;
and sobbed most piteously.

Miss Haredale, whose feelings were usually of a quieter kind than
Dolly's, and not so much upon the surface, was dreadfully
alarmed, and indeed had only just recovered from a swoon. She was
very pale, and the hand which Dolly held was quite cold; but she
bade her, nevertheless, remember that, under Providence, much must
depend upon their own discretion; that if they remained quiet and
lulled the vigilance of the ruffians into whose hands they had
fallen, the chances of their being able to procure assistance when
they reached the town, were very much increased; that unless
society were quite unhinged, a hot pursuit must be immediately
commenced; and that her uncle, she might be sure, would never rest
until he had found them out and rescued them. But as she said
these latter words, the idea that he had fallen in a general
massacre of the Catholics that night--no very wild or improbable
supposition after what they had seen and undergone--struck her
dumb; and, lost in the horrors they had witnessed, and those they
might be yet reserved for, she sat incapable of thought, or speech,
or outward show of grief: as rigid, and almost as white and cold,
as marble.

Oh, how many, many times, in that long ride, did Dolly think of her
old lover,--poor, fond, slighted Joe! How many, many times, did
she recall that night when she ran into his arms from the very man
now projecting his hateful gaze into the darkness where she sat,
and leering through the glass in monstrous admiration! And when
she thought of Joe, and what a brave fellow he was, and how he
would have rode boldly up, and dashed in among these villains now,
yes, though they were double the number--and here she clenched her
little hand, and pressed her foot upon the ground--the pride she
felt for a moment in having won his heart, faded in a burst of
tears, and she sobbed more bitterly than ever.

As the night wore on, and they proceeded by ways which were quite
unknown to them--for they could recognise none of the objects of
which they sometimes caught a hurried glimpse--their fears
increased; nor were they without good foundation; it was not
difficult for two beautiful young women to find, in their being
borne they knew not whither by a band of daring villains who eyed
them as some among these fellows did, reasons for the worst alarm.
When they at last entered London, by a suburb with which they were
wholly unacquainted, it was past midnight, and the streets were
dark and empty. Nor was this the worst, for the carriage stopping
in a lonely spot, Hugh suddenly opened the door, jumped in, and
took his seat between them.

It was in vain they cried for help. He put his arm about the neck
of each, and swore to stifle them with kisses if they were not as
silent as the grave.

'I come here to keep you quiet,' he said, 'and that's the means I
shall take. So don't be quiet, pretty mistresses--make a noise--
do--and I shall like it all the better.'

They were proceeding at a rapid pace, and apparently with fewer
attendants than before, though it was so dark (the torches being
extinguished) that this was mere conjecture. They shrunk from his
touch, each into the farthest corner of the carriage; but shrink as
Dolly would, his arm encircled her waist, and held her fast. She
neither cried nor spoke, for terror and disgust deprived her of the
power; but she plucked at his hand as though she would die in the
effort to disengage herself; and crouching on the ground, with her
head averted and held down, repelled him with a strength she
wondered at as much as he. The carriage stopped again.

'Lift this one out,' said Hugh to the man who opened the door, as
he took Miss Haredale's hand, and felt how heavily it fell. 'She's
fainted.'

'So much the better,' growled Dennis--it was that amiable
gentleman. 'She's quiet. I always like 'em to faint, unless
they're very tender and composed.'

'Can you take her by yourself?' asked Hugh.

'I don't know till I try. I ought to be able to; I've lifted up a
good many in my time,' said the hangman. 'Up then! She's no small
weight, brother; none of these here fine gals are. Up again! Now
we have her.'

Having by this time hoisted the young lady into his arms, he
staggered off with his burden.

'Look ye, pretty bird,' said Hugh, drawing Dolly towards him.
'Remember what I told you--a kiss for every cry. Scream, if you
love me, darling. Scream once, mistress. Pretty mistress, only
once, if you love me.'

Thrusting his face away with all her force, and holding down her
head, Dolly submitted to be carried out of the chaise, and borne
after Miss Haredale into a miserable cottage, where Hugh, after
hugging her to his breast, set her gently down upon the floor.

Poor Dolly! Do what she would, she only looked the better for it,
and tempted them the more. When her eyes flashed angrily, and her
ripe lips slightly parted, to give her rapid breathing vent, who
could resist it? When she wept and sobbed as though her heart
would break, and bemoaned her miseries in the sweetest voice that
ever fell upon a listener's ear, who could be insensible to the
little winning pettishness which now and then displayed itself,
even in the sincerity and earnestness of her grief? When,
forgetful for a moment of herself, as she was now, she fell on her
knees beside her friend, and bent over her, and laid her cheek to
hers, and put her arms about her, what mortal eyes could have
avoided wandering to the delicate bodice, the streaming hair, the
neglected dress, the perfect abandonment and unconsciousness of the
blooming little beauty? Who could look on and see her lavish
caresses and endearments, and not desire to be in Emma Haredale's
place; to be either her or Dolly; either the hugging or the hugged?
Not Hugh. Not Dennis.

'I tell you what it is, young women,' said Mr Dennis, 'I an't much
of a lady's man myself, nor am I a party in the present business
further than lending a willing hand to my friends: but if I see
much more of this here sort of thing, I shall become a principal
instead of a accessory. I tell you candid.'

'Why have you brought us here?' said Emma. 'Are we to be
murdered?'

'Murdered!' cried Dennis, sitting down upon a stool, and regarding
her with great favour. 'Why, my dear, who'd murder sich
chickabiddies as you? If you was to ask me, now, whether you was
brought here to be married, there might be something in it.'

And here he exchanged a grin with Hugh, who removed his eyes from
Dolly for the purpose.

'No, no,' said Dennis, 'there'll be no murdering, my pets. Nothing
of that sort. Quite the contrairy.'

'You are an older man than your companion, sir,' said Emma,
trembling. 'Have you no pity for us? Do you not consider that we
are women?'

'I do indeed, my dear,' retorted Dennis. 'It would be very hard
not to, with two such specimens afore my eyes. Ha ha! Oh yes , I
consider that. We all consider that, miss.'

He shook his head waggishly, leered at Hugh again, and laughed very
much, as if he had said a noble thing, and rather thought he was
coming out.

'There'll be no murdering, my dear. Not a bit on it. I tell you
what though, brother,' said Dennis, cocking his hat for the
convenience of scratching his head, and looking gravely at Hugh,
'it's worthy of notice, as a proof of the amazing equalness and
dignity of our law, that it don't make no distinction between men
and women. I've heerd the judge say, sometimes, to a highwayman or
housebreaker as had tied the ladies neck and heels--you'll excuse
me making mention of it, my darlings--and put 'em in a cellar, that
he showed no consideration to women. Now, I say that there judge
didn't know his business, brother; and that if I had been that
there highwayman or housebreaker, I should have made answer: "What
are you a talking of, my lord? I showed the women as much
consideration as the law does, and what more would you have me do?"
If you was to count up in the newspapers the number of females as
have been worked off in this here city alone, in the last ten
year,' said Mr Dennis thoughtfully, 'you'd be surprised at the
total--quite amazed, you would. There's a dignified and equal
thing; a beautiful thing! But we've no security for its lasting.
Now that they've begun to favour these here Papists, I shouldn't
wonder if they went and altered even THAT, one of these days. Upon
my soul, I shouldn't.'

The subject, perhaps from being of too exclusive and professional a
nature, failed to interest Hugh as much as his friend had
anticipated. But he had no time to pursue it, for at this crisis
Mr Tappertit entered precipitately; at sight of whom Dolly uttered
a scream of joy, and fairly threw herself into his arms.

'I knew it, I was sure of it!' cried Dolly. 'My dear father's at
the door. Thank God, thank God! Bless you, Sim. Heaven bless you
for this!'

Simon Tappertit, who had at first implicitly believed that the
locksmith's daughter, unable any longer to suppress her secret
passion for himself, was about to give it full vent in its
intensity, and to declare that she was his for ever, looked
extremely foolish when she said these words;--the more so, as they
were received by Hugh and Dennis with a loud laugh, which made her
draw back, and regard him with a fixed and earnest look.

'Miss Haredale,' said Sim, after a very awkward silence, 'I hope
you're as comfortable as circumstances will permit of. Dolly
Varden, my darling--my own, my lovely one--I hope YOU'RE pretty
comfortable likewise.'

Poor little Dolly! She saw how it was; hid her face in her hands;
and sobbed more bitterly than ever.

'You meet in me, Miss V.,' said Simon, laying his hand upon his
breast, 'not a 'prentice, not a workman, not a slave, not the
wictim of your father's tyrannical behaviour, but the leader of a
great people, the captain of a noble band, in which these gentlemen
are, as I may say, corporals and serjeants. You behold in me, not
a private individual, but a public character; not a mender of
locks, but a healer of the wounds of his unhappy country. Dolly
V., sweet Dolly V., for how many years have I looked forward to
this present meeting! For how many years has it been my intention
to exalt and ennoble you! I redeem it. Behold in me, your
husband. Yes, beautiful Dolly--charmer--enslaver--S. Tappertit is
all your own!'

As he said these words he advanced towards her. Dolly retreated
till she could go no farther, and then sank down upon the floor.
Thinking it very possible that this might be maiden modesty, Simon
essayed to raise her; on which Dolly, goaded to desperation, wound
her hands in his hair, and crying out amidst her tears that he was
a dreadful little wretch, and always had been, shook, and pulled,
and beat him, until he was fain to call for help, most lustily.
Hugh had never admired her half so much as at that moment.

'She's in an excited state to-night,' said Simon, as he smoothed
his rumpled feathers, 'and don't know when she's well off. Let her
be by herself till to-morrow, and that'll bring her down a little.
Carry her into the next house!'

Hugh had her in his arms directly. It might be that Mr Tappertit's
heart was really softened by her distress, or it might be that he
felt it in some degree indecorous that his intended bride should be
struggling in the grasp of another man. He commanded him, on
second thoughts, to put her down again, and looked moodily on as
she flew to Miss Haredale's side, and clinging to her dress, hid
her flushed face in its folds.

'They shall remain here together till to-morrow,' said Simon, who
had now quite recovered his dignity--'till to-morrow. Come away!'

'Ay!' cried Hugh. 'Come away, captain. Ha ha ha!'

'What are you laughing at?' demanded Simon sternly.

'Nothing, captain, nothing,' Hugh rejoined; and as he spoke, and
clapped his hand upon the shoulder of the little man, he laughed
again, for some unknown reason, with tenfold violence.

Mr Tappertit surveyed him from head to foot with lofty scorn (this
only made him laugh the more), and turning to the prisoners, said:

'You'll take notice, ladies, that this place is well watched on
every side, and that the least noise is certain to be attended with
unpleasant consequences. You'll hear--both of you--more of our
intentions to-morrow. In the mean time, don't show yourselves at
the window, or appeal to any of the people you may see pass it; for
if you do, it'll be known directly that you come from a Catholic
house, and all the exertions our men can make, may not be able to
save your lives.'

With this last caution, which was true enough, he turned to the
door, followed by Hugh and Dennis. They paused for a moment, going
out, to look at them clasped in each other's arms, and then left
the cottage; fastening the door, and setting a good watch upon it,
and indeed all round the house.

'I say,' growled Dennis, as they walked away in company, 'that's a
dainty pair. Muster Gashford's one is as handsome as the other,
eh?'

'Hush!' said Hugh, hastily. 'Don't you mention names. It's a bad
habit.'

'I wouldn't like to be HIM, then (as you don't like names), when he
breaks it out to her; that's all,' said Dennis. 'She's one of them
fine, black-eyed, proud gals, as I wouldn't trust at such times
with a knife too near 'em. I've seen some of that sort, afore now.
I recollect one that was worked off, many year ago--and there was a
gentleman in that case too--that says to me, with her lip a
trembling, but her hand as steady as ever I see one: "Dennis, I'm
near my end, but if I had a dagger in these fingers, and he was
within my reach, I'd strike him dead afore me;"--ah, she did--and
she'd have done it too!'

Strike who dead?' demanded Hugh.

'How should I know, brother?' answered Dennis. 'SHE never said;
not she.'

Hugh looked, for a moment, as though he would have made some
further inquiry into this incoherent recollection; but Simon
Tappertit, who had been meditating deeply, gave his thoughts a new
direction.

'Hugh!' said Sim. 'You have done well to-day. You shall be
rewarded. So have you, Dennis.--There's no young woman YOU want to
carry off, is there?'

'N--no,' returned that gentleman, stroking his grizzly beard, which
was some two inches long. 'None in partickler, I think.'

'Very good,' said Sim; 'then we'll find some other way of making it
up to you. As to you, old boy'--he turned to Hugh--'you shall have
Miggs (her that I promised you, you know) within three days. Mind.
I pass my word for it.'

Hugh thanked him heartily; and as he did so, his laughing fit
returned with such violence that he was obliged to hold his side
with one hand, and to lean with the other on the shoulder of his
small captain, without whose support he would certainly have rolled
upon the ground.

Chapter 60

The three worthies turned their faces towards The Boot, with the
intention of passing the night in that place of rendezvous, and of
seeking the repose they so much needed in the shelter of their old
den; for now that the mischief and destruction they had purposed
were achieved, and their prisoners were safely bestowed for the
night, they began to be conscious of exhaustion, and to feel the
wasting effects of the madness which had led to such deplorable
results.

Notwithstanding the lassitude and fatigue which oppressed him now,
in common with his two companions, and indeed with all who had
taken an active share in that night's work, Hugh's boisterous
merriment broke out afresh whenever he looked at Simon Tappertit,
and vented itself--much to that gentleman's indignation--in such
shouts of laughter as bade fair to bring the watch upon them, and
involve them in a skirmish, to which in their present worn-out
condition they might prove by no means equal. Even Mr Dennis, who
was not at all particular on the score of gravity or dignity, and
who had a great relish for his young friend's eccentric humours,
took occasion to remonstrate with him on this imprudent behaviour,
which he held to be a species of suicide, tantamount to a man's
working himself off without being overtaken by the law, than which
he could imagine nothing more ridiculous or impertinent.

Not abating one jot of his noisy mirth for these remonstrances,
Hugh reeled along between them, having an arm of each, until they
hove in sight of The Boot, and were within a field or two of that
convenient tavern. He happened by great good luck to have roared
and shouted himself into silence by this time. They were
proceeding onward without noise, when a scout who had been creeping
about the ditches all night, to warn any stragglers from
encroaching further on what was now such dangerous ground, peeped
cautiously from his hiding-place, and called to them to stop.

'Stop! and why?' said Hugh.

Because (the scout replied) the house was filled with constables
and soldiers; having been surprised that afternoon. The inmates
had fled or been taken into custody, he could not say which. He
had prevented a great many people from approaching nearer, and he
believed they had gone to the markets and such places to pass the
night. He had seen the distant fires, but they were all out now.
He had heard the people who passed and repassed, speaking of them
too, and could report that the prevailing opinion was one of
apprehension and dismay. He had not heard a word of Barnaby--
didn't even know his name--but it had been said in his hearing that
some man had been taken and carried off to Newgate. Whether this
was true or false, he could not affirm.

The three took counsel together, on hearing this, and debated what
it might be best to do. Hugh, deeming it possible that Barnaby was
in the hands of the soldiers, and at that moment under detention at
The Boot, was for advancing stealthily, and firing the house; but
his companions, who objected to such rash measures unless they had
a crowd at their backs, represented that if Barnaby were taken he
had assuredly been removed to a stronger prison; they would never
have dreamed of keeping him all night in a place so weak and open
to attack. Yielding to this reasoning, and to their persuasions,
Hugh consented to turn back and to repair to Fleet Market; for
which place, it seemed, a few of their boldest associates had
shaped their course, on receiving the same intelligence.

Feeling their strength recruited and their spirits roused, now that
there was a new necessity for action, they hurried away, quite
forgetful of the fatigue under which they had been sinking but a
few minutes before; and soon arrived at their new place of
destination.

Fleet Market, at that time, was a long irregular row of wooden
sheds and penthouses, occupying the centre of what is now called
Farringdon Street. They were jumbled together in a most unsightly
fashion, in the middle of the road; to the great obstruction of the
thoroughfare and the annoyance of passengers, who were fain to make
their way, as they best could, among carts, baskets, barrows,
trucks, casks, bulks, and benches, and to jostle with porters,
hucksters, waggoners, and a motley crowd of buyers, sellers, pick-
pockets, vagrants, and idlers. The air was perfumed with the
stench of rotten leaves and faded fruit; the refuse of the
butchers' stalls, and offal and garbage of a hundred kinds. It was
indispensable to most public conveniences in those days, that they
should be public nuisances likewise; and Fleet Market maintained
the principle to admiration.

To this place, perhaps because its sheds and baskets were a
tolerable substitute for beds, or perhaps because it afforded the
means of a hasty barricade in case of need, many of the rioters had
straggled, not only that night, but for two or three nights before.
It was now broad day, but the morning being cold, a group of them
were gathered round a fire in a public-house, drinking hot purl,
and smoking pipes, and planning new schemes for to-morrow.

Hugh and his two friends being known to most of these men, were
received with signal marks of approbation, and inducted into the
most honourable seats. The room-door was closed and fastened to
keep intruders at a distance, and then they proceeded to exchange
news.

'The soldiers have taken possession of The Boot, I hear,' said
Hugh. 'Who knows anything about it?'

Several cried that they did; but the majority of the company
having been engaged in the assault upon the Warren, and all
present having been concerned in one or other of the night's
expeditions, it proved that they knew no more than Hugh himself;
having been merely warned by each other, or by the scout, and
knowing nothing of their own knowledge.

'We left a man on guard there to-day,' said Hugh, looking round
him, 'who is not here. You know who it is--Barnaby, who brought
the soldier down, at Westminster. Has any man seen or heard of
him?'

They shook their heads, and murmured an answer in the negative, as
each man looked round and appealed to his fellow; when a noise was
heard without, and a man was heard to say that he wanted Hugh--that
he must see Hugh.

'He is but one man,' cried Hugh to those who kept the door; 'let
him come in.'

'Ay, ay!' muttered the others. 'Let him come in. Let him come
in.'

The door was accordingly unlocked and opened. A one-armed man,
with his head and face tied up with a bloody cloth, as though he
had been severely beaten, his clothes torn, and his remaining hand
grasping a thick stick, rushed in among them, and panting for
breath, demanded which was Hugh.

'Here he is,' replied the person he inquired for. 'I am Hugh.
What do you want with me?'

'I have a message for you,' said the man. 'You know one Barnaby.'

'What of him? Did he send the message?'

'Yes. He's taken. He's in one of the strong cells in Newgate. He
defended himself as well as he could, but was overpowered by
numbers. That's his message.'

'When did you see him?' asked Hugh, hastily.

'On his way to prison, where he was taken by a party of soldiers.
They took a by-road, and not the one we expected. I was one of
the few who tried to rescue him, and he called to me, and told me
to tell Hugh where he was. We made a good struggle, though it
failed. Look here!'

He pointed to his dress and to his bandaged head, and still panting
for breath, glanced round the room; then faced towards Hugh again.

'I know you by sight,' he said, 'for I was in the crowd on Friday,
and on Saturday, and yesterday, but I didn't know your name.
You're a bold fellow, I know. So is he. He fought like a lion
tonight, but it was of no use. I did my best, considering that I
want this limb.'

Again he glanced inquisitively round the room or seemed to do so,
for his face was nearly hidden by the bandage--and again facing
sharply towards Hugh, grasped his stick as if he half expected to
be set upon, and stood on the defensive.

If he had any such apprehension, however, he was speedily reassured
by the demeanour of all present. None thought of the bearer of the
tidings. He was lost in the news he brought. Oaths, threats, and
execrations, were vented on all sides. Some cried that if they
bore this tamely, another day would see them all in jail; some,
that they should have rescued the other prisoners, and this would
not have happened. One man cried in a loud voice, 'Who'll follow
me to Newgate!' and there was a loud shout and general rush towards
the door.

But Hugh and Dennis stood with their backs against it, and kept
them back, until the clamour had so far subsided that their voices
could be heard, when they called to them together that to go now,
in broad day, would be madness; and that if they waited until night
and arranged a plan of attack, they might release, not only their
own companions, but all the prisoners, and burn down the jail.

'Not that jail alone,' cried Hugh, 'but every jail in London. They
shall have no place to put their prisoners in. We'll burn them all
down; make bonfires of them every one! Here!' he cried, catching
at the hangman's hand. 'Let all who're men here, join with us.
Shake hands upon it. Barnaby out of jail, and not a jail left
standing! Who joins?'

Every man there. And they swore a great oath to release their
friends from Newgate next night; to force the doors and burn the
jail; or perish in the fire themselves.

Chapter 61

On that same night--events so crowd upon each other in convulsed
and distracted times, that more than the stirring incidents of a
whole life often become compressed into the compass of four-and-
twenty hours--on that same night, Mr Haredale, having strongly
bound his prisoner, with the assistance of the sexton, and forced
him to mount his horse, conducted him to Chigwell; bent upon
procuring a conveyance to London from that place, and carrying him
at once before a justice. The disturbed state of the town would
be, he knew, a sufficient reason for demanding the murderer's
committal to prison before daybreak, as no man could answer for the
security of any of the watch-houses or ordinary places of
detention; and to convey a prisoner through the streets when the
mob were again abroad, would not only be a task of great danger and
hazard, but would be to challenge an attempt at rescue. Directing
the sexton to lead the horse, he walked close by the murderer's
side, and in this order they reached the village about the middle
of the night.

The people were all awake and up, for they were fearful of being
burnt in their beds, and sought to comfort and assure each other by
watching in company. A few of the stoutest-hearted were armed and
gathered in a body on the green. To these, who knew him well, Mr
Haredale addressed himself, briefly narrating what had happened,
and beseeching them to aid in conveying the criminal to London
before the dawn of day.

But not a man among them dared to help him by so much as the motion
of a finger. The rioters, in their passage through the village,
had menaced with their fiercest vengeance, any person who should
aid in extinguishing the fire, or render the least assistance to
him, or any Catholic whomsoever. Their threats extended to their
lives and all they possessed. They were assembled for their own
protection, and could not endanger themselves by lending any aid to
him. This they told him, not without hesitation and regret, as
they kept aloof in the moonlight and glanced fearfully at the
ghostly rider, who, with his head drooping on his breast and his
hat slouched down upon his brow, neither moved nor spoke.

Finding it impossible to persuade them, and indeed hardly knowing
how to do so after what they had seen of the fury of the crowd, Mr
Haredale besought them that at least they would leave him free to
act for himself, and would suffer him to take the only chaise and
pair of horses that the place afforded. This was not acceded to
without some difficulty, but in the end they told him to do what he
would, and go away from them in heaven's name.

Leaving the sexton at the horse's bridle, he drew out the chaise
with his own hands, and would have harnessed the horses, but that
the post-boy of the village--a soft-hearted, good-for-nothing,
vagabond kind of fellow--was moved by his earnestness and passion,
and, throwing down a pitchfork with which he was armed, swore that
the rioters might cut him into mincemeat if they liked, but he
would not stand by and see an honest gentleman who had done no
wrong, reduced to such extremity, without doing what he could to
help him. Mr Haredale shook him warmly by the hand, and thanked
him from his heart. In five minutes' time the chaise was ready,
and this good scapegrace in his saddle. The murderer was put
inside, the blinds were drawn up, the sexton took his seat upon the
bar, Mr Haredale mounted his horse and rode close beside the door;
and so they started in the dead of night, and in profound silence,
for London.

The consternation was so extreme that even the horses which had
escaped the flames at the Warren, could find no friends to shelter
them. They passed them on the road, browsing on the stunted grass;
and the driver told them, that the poor beasts had wandered to the
village first, but had been driven away, lest they should bring
the vengeance of the crowd on any of the inhabitants.

Nor was this feeling confined to such small places, where the
people were timid, ignorant, and unprotected. When they came near
London they met, in the grey light of morning, more than one poor
Catholic family who, terrified by the threats and warnings of
their neighbours, were quitting the city on foot, and who told them
they could hire no cart or horse for the removal of their goods,
and had been compelled to leave them behind, at the mercy of the
crowd. Near Mile End they passed a house, the master of which, a
Catholic gentleman of small means, having hired a waggon to remove
his furniture by midnight, had had it all brought down into the
street, to wait the vehicle's arrival, and save time in the
packing. But the man with whom he made the bargain, alarmed by the
fires that night, and by the sight of the rioters passing his
door, had refused to keep it: and the poor gentleman, with his wife
and servant and their little children, were sitting trembling among
their goods in the open street, dreading the arrival of day and not
knowing where to turn or what to do.

It was the same, they heard, with the public conveyances. The
panic was so great that the mails and stage-coaches were afraid to
carry passengers who professed the obnoxious religion. If the
drivers knew them, or they admitted that they held that creed, they
would not take them, no, though they offered large sums; and
yesterday, people had been afraid to recognise Catholic
acquaintance in the streets, lest they should be marked by spies,
and burnt out, as it was called, in consequence. One mild old man--
a priest, whose chapel was destroyed; a very feeble, patient,
inoffensive creature--who was trudging away, alone, designing to
walk some distance from town, and then try his fortune with the
coaches, told Mr Haredale that he feared he might not find a
magistrate who would have the hardihood to commit a prisoner to
jail, on his complaint. But notwithstanding these discouraging
accounts they went on, and reached the Mansion House soon after
sunrise.

Mr Haredale threw himself from his horse, but he had no need to
knock at the door, for it was already open, and there stood upon
the step a portly old man, with a very red, or rather purple face,
who with an anxious expression of countenance, was remonstrating
with some unseen personage upstairs, while the porter essayed to
close the door by degrees and get rid of him. With the intense
impatience and excitement natural to one in his condition, Mr
Haredale thrust himself forward and was about to speak, when the
fat old gentleman interposed:

'My good sir,' said he, 'pray let me get an answer. This is the
sixth time I have been here. I was here five times yesterday. My
house is threatened with destruction. It is to be burned down to-
night, and was to have been last night, but they had other business
on their hands. Pray let me get an answer.'

'My good sir,' returned Mr Haredale, shaking his head, 'my house
is burned to the ground. But heaven forbid that yours should be.
Get your answer. Be brief, in mercy to me.'

'Now, you hear this, my lord?'--said the old gentleman, calling up
the stairs, to where the skirt of a dressing-gown fluttered on the
landing-place. 'Here is a gentleman here, whose house was actually
burnt down last night.'

'Dear me, dear me,' replied a testy voice, 'I am very sorry for
it, but what am I to do? I can't build it up again. The chief
magistrate of the city can't go and be a rebuilding of people's
houses, my good sir. Stuff and nonsense!'

'But the chief magistrate of the city can prevent people's houses
from having any need to be rebuilt, if the chief magistrate's a
man, and not a dummy--can't he, my lord?' cried the old gentleman
in a choleric manner.

'You are disrespectable, sir,' said the Lord Mayor--'leastways,
disrespectful I mean.'

'Disrespectful, my lord!' returned the old gentleman. 'I was
respectful five times yesterday. I can't be respectful for ever.
Men can't stand on being respectful when their houses are going to
be burnt over their heads, with them in 'em. What am I to do, my
lord? AM I to have any protection!'

'I told you yesterday, sir,' said the Lord Mayor, 'that you might
have an alderman in your house, if you could get one to come.'

'What the devil's the good of an alderman?' returned the choleric
old gentleman.

'--To awe the crowd, sir,' said the Lord Mayor.

'Oh Lord ha' mercy!' whimpered the old gentleman, as he wiped his
forehead in a state of ludicrous distress, 'to think of sending an
alderman to awe a crowd! Why, my lord, if they were even so many
babies, fed on mother's milk, what do you think they'd care for an
alderman! Will YOU come?'

'I!' said the Lord Mayor, most emphatically: 'Certainly not.'

'Then what,' returned the old gentleman, 'what am I to do? Am I a
citizen of England? Am I to have the benefit of the laws? Am I to
have any return for the King's taxes?'

'I don't know, I am sure,' said the Lord Mayor; 'what a pity it is
you're a Catholic! Why couldn't you be a Protestant, and then you
wouldn't have got yourself into such a mess? I'm sure I don't know
what's to be done.--There are great people at the bottom of these
riots.--Oh dear me, what a thing it is to be a public character!--
You must look in again in the course of the day.--Would a javelin-
man do?--Or there's Philips the constable,--HE'S disengaged,--he's
not very old for a man at his time of life, except in his legs, and
if you put him up at a window he'd look quite young by candle-
light, and might frighten 'em very much.--Oh dear!--well!--we'll
see about it.'

'Stop!' cried Mr Haredale, pressing the door open as the porter
strove to shut it, and speaking rapidly, 'My Lord Mayor, I beg you
not to go away. I have a man here, who committed a murder eight-
and-twenty years ago. Half-a-dozen words from me, on oath, will
justify you in committing him to prison for re-examination. I only
seek, just now, to have him consigned to a place of safety. The
least delay may involve his being rescued by the rioters.'

'Oh dear me!' cried the Lord Mayor. 'God bless my soul--and body--
oh Lor!--well I!--there are great people at the bottom of these
riots, you know.--You really mustn't.'

'My lord,' said Mr Haredale, 'the murdered gentleman was my
brother; I succeeded to his inheritance; there were not wanting
slanderous tongues at that time, to whisper that the guilt of this
most foul and cruel deed was mine--mine, who loved him, as he
knows, in Heaven, dearly. The time has come, after all these years
of gloom and misery, for avenging him, and bringing to light a
crime so artful and so devilish that it has no parallel. Every
second's delay on your part loosens this man's bloody hands again,
and leads to his escape. My lord, I charge you hear me, and
despatch this matter on the instant.'

'Oh dear me!' cried the chief magistrate; 'these an't business
hours, you know--I wonder at you--how ungentlemanly it is of you--
you mustn't--you really mustn't.--And I suppose you are a Catholic
too?'

'I am,' said Mr Haredale.

'God bless my soul, I believe people turn Catholics a'purpose to
vex and worrit me,' cried the Lord Mayor. 'I wish you wouldn't
come here; they'll be setting the Mansion House afire next, and we
shall have you to thank for it. You must lock your prisoner up,
sir--give him to a watchman--and--call again at a proper time.
Then we'll see about it!'

Before Mr Haredale could answer, the sharp closing of a door and
drawing of its bolts, gave notice that the Lord Mayor had retreated
to his bedroom, and that further remonstrance would be unavailing.
The two clients retreated likewise, and the porter shut them out
into the street.

'That's the way he puts me off,' said the old gentleman, 'I can
get no redress and no help. What are you going to do, sir?'

'To try elsewhere,' answered Mr Haredale, who was by this time on
horseback.

'I feel for you, I assure you--and well I may, for we are in a
common cause,' said the old gentleman. 'I may not have a house to
offer you to-night; let me tender it while I can. On second
thoughts though,' he added, putting up a pocket-book he had
produced while speaking, 'I'll not give you a card, for if it was
found upon you, it might get you into trouble. Langdale--that's my
name--vintner and distiller--Holborn Hill--you're heartily welcome,
if you'll come.'

Mr Haredale bowed, and rode off, close beside the chaise as before;
determining to repair to the house of Sir John Fielding, who had
the reputation of being a bold and active magistrate, and fully
resolved, in case the rioters should come upon them, to do
execution on the murderer with his own hands, rather than suffer
him to be released.

They arrived at the magistrate's dwelling, however, without
molestation (for the mob, as we have seen, were then intent on
deeper schemes), and knocked at the door. As it had been pretty
generally rumoured that Sir John was proscribed by the rioters, a
body of thief-takers had been keeping watch in the house all night.
To one of them Mr Haredale stated his business, which appearing to
the man of sufficient moment to warrant his arousing the justice,
procured him an immediate audience.

No time was lost in committing the murderer to Newgate; then a new
building, recently completed at a vast expense, and considered to
be of enormous strength. The warrant being made out, three of the
thief-takers bound him afresh (he had been struggling, it seemed,
in the chaise, and had loosened his manacles); gagged him lest they
should meet with any of the mob, and he should call to them for
help; and seated themselves, along with him, in the carriage.
These men being all well armed, made a formidable escort; but they
drew up the blinds again, as though the carriage were empty, and
directed Mr Haredale to ride forward, that he might not attract
attention by seeming to belong to it.

The wisdom of this proceeding was sufficiently obvious, for as they
hurried through the city they passed among several groups of men,
who, if they had not supposed the chaise to be quite empty, would
certainly have stopped it. But those within keeping quite close,
and the driver tarrying to be asked no questions, they reached the
prison without interruption, and, once there, had him out, and safe
within its gloomy walls, in a twinkling.

With eager eyes and strained attention, Mr Haredale saw him
chained, and locked and barred up in his cell. Nay, when he had
left the jail, and stood in the free street, without, he felt the
iron plates upon the doors, with his hands, and drew them over the
stone wall, to assure himself that it was real; and to exult in its
being so strong, and rough, and cold. It was not until he turned
his back upon the jail, and glanced along the empty streets, so
lifeless and quiet in the bright morning, that he felt the weight
upon his heart; that he knew he was tortured by anxiety for those
he had left at home; and that home itself was but another bead in
the long rosary of his regrets.

Chapter 62

The prisoner, left to himself, sat down upon his bedstead: and
resting his elbows on his knees, and his chin upon his hands,
remained in that attitude for hours. It would be hard to say, of
what nature his reflections were. They had no distinctness, and,
saving for some flashes now and then, no reference to his condition
or the train of circumstances by which it had been brought about.
The cracks in the pavement of his cell, the chinks in the wall
where stone was joined to stone, the bars in the window, the iron
ring upon the floor,--such things as these, subsiding strangely
into one another, and awakening an indescribable kind of interest
and amusement, engrossed his whole mind; and although at the bottom
of his every thought there was an uneasy sense of guilt, and dread
of death, he felt no more than that vague consciousness of it,
which a sleeper has of pain. It pursues him through his dreams,
gnaws at the heart of all his fancied pleasures, robs the banquet
of its taste, music of its sweetness, makes happiness itself
unhappy, and yet is no bodily sensation, but a phantom without
shape, or form, or visible presence; pervading everything, but
having no existence; recognisable everywhere, but nowhere seen, or
touched, or met with face to face, until the sleep is past, and
waking agony returns.

After a long time the door of his cell opened. He looked up; saw
the blind man enter; and relapsed into his former position.

Guided by his breathing, the visitor advanced to where he sat; and
stopping beside him, and stretching out his hand to assure himself
that he was right, remained, for a good space, silent.

'This is bad, Rudge. This is bad,' he said at length.

The prisoner shuffled with his feet upon the ground in turning his
body from him, but made no other answer.

'How were you taken?' he asked. 'And where? You never told me
more than half your secret. No matter; I know it now. How was it,
and where, eh?' he asked again, coming still nearer to him.

'At Chigwell,' said the other.

'At Chigwell! How came you there?'

'Because I went there to avoid the man I stumbled on,' he answered.
'Because I was chased and driven there, by him and Fate. Because I
was urged to go there, by something stronger than my own will.
When I found him watching in the house she used to live in, night
after night, I knew I never could escape him--never! and when I
heard the Bell--'

He shivered; muttered that it was very cold; paced quickly up and
down the narrow cell; and sitting down again, fell into his old
posture.

'You were saying,' said the blind man, after another pause, 'that
when you heard the Bell--'

'Let it be, will you?' he retorted in a hurried voice. 'It hangs
there yet.'

The blind man turned a wistful and inquisitive face towards him,
but he continued to speak, without noticing him.

'I went to Chigwell, in search of the mob. I have been so hunted
and beset by this man, that I knew my only hope of safety lay in
joining them. They had gone on before; I followed them when it
left off.'

'When what left off?'

'The Bell. They had quitted the place. I hoped that some of them
might be still lingering among the ruins, and was searching for
them when I heard--' he drew a long breath, and wiped his forehead
with his sleeve--'his voice.'

'Saying what?'

'No matter what. I don't know. I was then at the foot of the
turret, where I did the--'

'Ay,' said the blind man, nodding his head with perfect composure,
'I understand.'

'I climbed the stair, or so much of it as was left; meaning to hide
till he had gone. But he heard me; and followed almost as soon as
I set foot upon the ashes.'

'You might have hidden in the wall, and thrown him down, or stabbed
him,' said the blind man.

'Might I? Between that man and me, was one who led him on--I saw
it, though he did not--and raised above his head a bloody hand. It
was in the room above that HE and I stood glaring at each other on
the night of the murder, and before he fell he raised his hand like
that, and fixed his eyes on me. I knew the chase would end there.'

'You have a strong fancy,' said the blind man, with a smile.

'Strengthen yours with blood, and see what it will come to.'

He groaned, and rocked himself, and looking up for the first time,
said, in a low, hollow voice:

'Eight-and-twenty years! Eight-and-twenty years! He has never
changed in all that time, never grown older, nor altered in the
least degree. He has been before me in the dark night, and the
broad sunny day; in the twilight, the moonlight, the sunlight, the
light of fire, and lamp, and candle; and in the deepest gloom.
Always the same! In company, in solitude, on land, on shipboard;
sometimes leaving me alone for months, and sometimes always with
me. I have seen him, at sea, come gliding in the dead of night
along the bright reflection of the moon in the calm water; and I
have seen him, on quays and market-places, with his hand uplifted,
towering, the centre of a busy crowd, unconscious of the terrible
form that had its silent stand among them. Fancy! Are you real?
Am I? Are these iron fetters, riveted on me by the smith's hammer,
or are they fancies I can shatter at a blow?'

The blind man listened in silence.

'Fancy! Do I fancy that I killed him? Do I fancy that as I left
the chamber where he lay, I saw the face of a man peeping from a
dark door, who plainly showed me by his fearful looks that he
suspected what I had done? Do I remember that I spoke fairly to
him--that I drew nearer--nearer yet--with the hot knife in my
sleeve? Do I fancy how HE died? Did he stagger back into the
angle of the wall into which I had hemmed him, and, bleeding
inwardly, stand, not fail, a corpse before me? Did I see him, for
an instant, as I see you now, erect and on his feet--but dead!'

The blind man, who knew that he had risen, motioned him to sit down
again upon his bedstead; but he took no notice of the gesture.

'It was then I thought, for the first time, of fastening the murder
upon him. It was then I dressed him in my clothes, and dragged him
down the back-stairs to the piece of water. Do I remember
listening to the bubbles that came rising up when I had rolled him
in? Do I remember wiping the water from my face, and because the
body splashed it there, in its descent, feeling as if it MUST be
blood?

'Did I go home when I had done? And oh, my God! how long it took
to do! Did I stand before my wife, and tell her? Did I see her
fall upon the ground; and, when I stooped to raise her, did she
thrust me back with a force that cast me off as if I had been a
child, staining the hand with which she clasped my wrist? Is THAT
fancy?

'Did she go down upon her knees, and call on Heaven to witness that
she and her unborn child renounced me from that hour; and did she,
in words so solemn that they turned me cold--me, fresh from the
horrors my own hands had made--warn me to fly while there was time;
for though she would be silent, being my wretched wife, she would
not shelter me? Did I go forth that night, abjured of God and man,
and anchored deep in hell, to wander at my cable's length about the
earth, and surely be drawn down at last?'

'Why did you return? said the blind man.

'Why is blood red? I could no more help it, than I could live
without breath. I struggled against the impulse, but I was drawn
back, through every difficult and adverse circumstance, as by a
mighty engine. Nothing could stop me. The day and hour were none
of my choice. Sleeping and waking, I had been among the old haunts
for years--had visited my own grave. Why did I come back? Because
this jail was gaping for me, and he stood beckoning at the door.'

'You were not known?' said the blind man.

'I was a man who had been twenty-two years dead. No. I was not
known.'

'You should have kept your secret better.'

'MY secret? MINE? It was a secret, any breath of air could
whisper at its will. The stars had it in their twinkling, the
water in its flowing, the leaves in their rustling, the seasons in
their return. It lurked in strangers' faces, and their voices.
Everything had lips on which it always trembled.--MY secret!'

'It was revealed by your own act at any rate,' said the blind man.

'The act was not mine. I did it, but it was not mine. I was
forced at times to wander round, and round, and round that spot.
If you had chained me up when the fit was on me, I should have
broken away, and gone there. As truly as the loadstone draws iron
towards it, so he, lying at the bottom of his grave, could draw me
near him when he would. Was that fancy? Did I like to go there,
or did I strive and wrestle with the power that forced me?'

The blind man shrugged his shoulders, and smiled incredulously.
The prisoner again resumed his old attitude, and for a long time
both were mute.

'I suppose then,' said his visitor, at length breaking silence,
'that you are penitent and resigned; that you desire to make peace
with everybody (in particular, with your wife who has brought you
to this); and that you ask no greater favour than to be carried to
Tyburn as soon as possible? That being the case, I had better take
my leave. I am not good enough to be company for you.'

'Have I not told you,' said the other fiercely, 'that I have
striven and wrestled with the power that brought me here? Has my
whole life, for eight-and-twenty years, been one perpetual
struggle and resistance, and do you think I want to lie down and
die? Do all men shrink from death--I most of all!'

'That's better said. That's better spoken, Rudge--but I'll not
call you that again--than anything you have said yet,' returned the
blind man, speaking more familiarly, and laying his hands upon his
arm. 'Lookye,--I never killed a man myself, for I have never been
placed in a position that made it worth my while. Farther, I am
not an advocate for killing men, and I don't think I should
recommend it or like it--for it's very hazardous--under any
circumstances. But as you had the misfortune to get into this
trouble before I made your acquaintance, and as you have been my
companion, and have been of use to me for a long time now, I
overlook that part of the matter, and am only anxious that you
shouldn't die unnecessarily. Now, I do not consider that, at
present, it is at all necessary.'

'What else is left me?' returned the prisoner. 'To eat my way
through these walls with my teeth?'

'Something easier than that,' returned his friend. 'Promise me
that you will talk no more of these fancies of yours--idle, foolish
things, quite beneath a man--and I'll tell you what I mean.'

'Tell me,' said the other.

'Your worthy lady with the tender conscience; your scrupulous,
virtuous, punctilious, but not blindly affectionate wife--'

'What of her?'

'Is now in London.'

'A curse upon her, be she where she may!'

'That's natural enough. If she had taken her annuity as usual, you
would not have been here, and we should have been better off. But
that's apart from the business. She's in London. Scared, as I
suppose, and have no doubt, by my representation when I waited upon
her, that you were close at hand (which I, of course, urged only as
an inducement to compliance, knowing that she was not pining to see
you), she left that place, and travelled up to London.'

'How do you know?'

'From my friend the noble captain--the illustrious general--the
bladder, Mr Tappertit. I learnt from him the last time I saw him,
which was yesterday, that your son who is called Barnaby--not after
his father, I suppose--'

'Death! does that matter now!'

'--You are impatient,' said the blind man, calmly; 'it's a good
sign, and looks like life--that your son Barnaby had been lured
away from her by one of his companions who knew him of old, at
Chigwell; and that he is now among the rioters.'

'And what is that to me? If father and son be hanged together,
what comfort shall I find in that?'

'Stay--stay, my friend,' returned the blind man, with a cunning
look, 'you travel fast to journeys' ends. Suppose I track my lady
out, and say thus much: "You want your son, ma'am--good. I,
knowing those who tempt him to remain among them, can restore him
to you, ma'am--good. You must pay a price, ma'am, for his
restoration--good again. The price is small, and easy to be paid--
dear ma'am, that's best of all."'

'What mockery is this?'

'Very likely, she may reply in those words. "No mockery at all," I
answer: "Madam, a person said to be your husband (identity is
difficult of proof after the lapse of many years) is in prison, his
life in peril--the charge against him, murder. Now, ma'am, your
husband has been dead a long, long time. The gentleman never can
be confounded with him, if you will have the goodness to say a few
words, on oath, as to when he died, and how; and that this person
(who I am told resembles him in some degree) is no more he than I
am. Such testimony will set the question quite at rest. Pledge
yourself to me to give it, ma' am, and I will undertake to keep
your son (a fine lad) out of harm's way until you have done this
trifling service, when he shall he delivered up to you, safe and
sound. On the other hand, if you decline to do so, I fear he will
be betrayed, and handed over to the law, which will assuredly
sentence him to suffer death. It is, in fact, a choice between his
life and death. If you refuse, he swings. If you comply, the
timber is not grown, nor the hemp sown, that shall do him any
harm."'

'There is a gleam of hope in this!' cried the prisoner.

'A gleam!' returned his friend, 'a noon-blaze; a full and glorious
daylight. Hush! I hear the tread of distant feet. Rely on me.'

'When shall I hear more?'

'As soon as I do. I should hope, to-morrow. They are coming to
say that our time for talk is over. I hear the jingling of the
keys. Not another word of this just now, or they may overhear us.'

As he said these words, the lock was turned, and one of the prison
turnkeys appearing at the door, announced that it was time for
visitors to leave the jail.

'So soon!' said Stagg, meekly. 'But it can't be helped. Cheer up,
friend. This mistake will soon be set at rest, and then you are a
man again! If this charitable gentleman will lead a blind man (who
has nothing in return but prayers) to the prison-porch, and set him
with his face towards the west, he will do a worthy deed. Thank
you, good sir. I thank you very kindly.'

So saying, and pausing for an instant at the door to turn his
grinning face towards his friend, he departed.

When the officer had seen him to the porch, he returned, and again
unlocking and unbarring the door of the cell, set it wide open,
informing its inmate that he was at liberty to walk in the adjacent
yard, if he thought proper, for an hour.

The prisoner answered with a sullen nod; and being left alone
again, sat brooding over what he had heard, and pondering upon the
hopes the recent conversation had awakened; gazing abstractedly,
the while he did so, on the light without, and watching the shadows
thrown by one wall on another, and on the stone-paved ground.

It was a dull, square yard, made cold and gloomy by high walls, and
seeming to chill the very sunlight. The stone, so bare, and
rough, and obdurate, filled even him with longing thoughts of
meadow-land and trees; and with a burning wish to be at liberty.
As he looked, he rose, and leaning against the door-post, gazed up
at the bright blue sky, smiling even on that dreary home of crime.
He seemed, for a moment, to remember lying on his back in some
sweet-scented place, and gazing at it through moving branches, long
ago.

His attention was suddenly attracted by a clanking sound--he knew
what it was, for he had startled himself by making the same noise
in walking to the door. Presently a voice began to sing, and he
saw the shadow of a figure on the pavement. It stopped--was
silent all at once, as though the person for a moment had forgotten
where he was, but soon remembered--and so, with the same clanking
noise, the shadow disappeared.

He walked out into the court and paced it to and fro; startling the
echoes, as he went, with the harsh jangling of his fetters. There
was a door near his, which, like his, stood ajar.

He had not taken half-a-dozen turns up and down the yard, when,
standing still to observe this door, he heard the clanking sound
again. A face looked out of the grated window--he saw it very
dimly, for the cell was dark and the bars were heavy--and directly
afterwards, a man appeared, and came towards him.

For the sense of loneliness he had, he might have been in jail a
year. Made eager by the hope of companionship, he quickened his
pace, and hastened to meet the man half way--

What was this! His son!

They stood face to face, staring at each other. He shrinking and
cowed, despite himself; Barnahy struggling with his imperfect
memory, and wondering where he had seen that face before. He was
not uncertain long, for suddenly he laid hands upon him, and
striving to bear him to the ground, cried:

'Ah! I know! You are the robber!'

He said nothing in reply at first, but held down his head, and
struggled with him silently. Finding the younger man too strong
for him, he raised his face, looked close into his eyes, and said,

'I am your father.'

God knows what magic the name had for his ears; but Barnaby
released his hold, fell back, and looked at him aghast. Suddenly
he sprung towards him, put his arms about his neck, and pressed his
head against his cheek.

Yes, yes, he was; he was sure he was. But where had he been so
long, and why had he left his mother by herself, or worse than by
herself, with her poor foolish boy? And had she really been as
happy as they said? And where was she? Was she near there? She
was not happy now, and he in jail? Ah, no.

Not a word was said in answer; but Grip croaked loudly, and hopped
about them, round and round, as if enclosing them in a magic
circle, and invoking all the powers of mischief.

Chapter 63

During the whole of this day, every regiment in or near the
metropolis was on duty in one or other part of the town; and the
regulars and militia, in obedience to the orders which were sent to
every barrack and station within twenty-four hours' journey, began
to pour in by all the roads. But the disturbance had attained to
such a formidable height, and the rioters had grown, with impunity,
to be so audacious, that the sight of this great force, continually
augmented by new arrivals, instead of operating as a check,
stimulated them to outrages of greater hardihood than any they had
yet committed; and helped to kindle a flame in London, the like of
which had never been beheld, even in its ancient and rebellious
times.

All yesterday, and on this day likewise, the commander-in-chief
endeavoured to arouse the magistrates to a sense of their duty, and
in particular the Lord Mayor, who was the faintest-hearted and most
timid of them all. With this object, large bodies of the soldiery
were several times despatched to the Mansion House to await his
orders: but as he could, by no threats or persuasions, be induced
to give any, and as the men remained in the open street,
fruitlessly for any good purpose, and thrivingly for a very bad
one; these laudable attempts did harm rather than good. For the
crowd, becoming speedily acquainted with the Lord Mayor's temper,
did not fail to take advantage of it by boasting that even the
civil authorities were opposed to the Papists, and could not find
it in their hearts to molest those who were guilty of no other
offence. These vaunts they took care to make within the hearing of
the soldiers; and they, being naturally loth to quarrel with the
people, received their advances kindly enough: answering, when
they were asked if they desired to fire upon their countrymen, 'No,
they would be damned if they did;' and showing much honest
simplicity and good nature. The feeling that the military were No-
Popery men, and were ripe for disobeying orders and joining the
mob, soon became very prevalent in consequence. Rumours of their
disaffection, and of their leaning towards the popular cause,
spread from mouth to mouth with astonishing rapidity; and whenever
they were drawn up idly in the streets or squares, there was sure
to be a crowd about them, cheering and shaking hands, and treating
them with a great show of confidence and affection.

By this time, the crowd was everywhere; all concealment and
disguise were laid aside, and they pervaded the whole town. If
any man among them wanted money, he had but to knock at the door of
a dwelling-house, or walk into a shop, and demand it in the rioters
name; and his demand was instantly complied with. The peaceable
citizens being afraid to lay hands upon them, singly and alone, it
may be easily supposed that when gathered together in bodies, they
were perfectly secure from interruption. They assembled in the
streets, traversed them at their will and pleasure, and publicly
concerted their plans. Business was quite suspended; the greater
part of the shops were closed; most of the houses displayed a blue
flag in token of their adherence to the popular side; and even the
Jews in Houndsditch, Whitechapel, and those quarters, wrote upon
their doors or window-shutters, 'This House is a True Protestant.'
The crowd was the law, and never was the law held in greater dread,
or more implicitly obeyed.

It was about six o'clock in the evening, when a vast mob poured
into Lincoln's Inn Fields by every avenue, and divided--evidently
in pursuance of a previous design--into several parties. It must
not be understood that this arrangement was known to the whole
crowd, but that it was the work of a few leaders; who, mingling
with the men as they came upon the ground, and calling to them to
fall into this or that parry, effected it as rapidly as if it had
been determined on by a council of the whole number, and every man
had known his place.

It was perfectly notorious to the assemblage that the largest
body, which comprehended about two-thirds of the whole, was
designed for the attack on Newgate. It comprehended all the
rioters who had been conspicuous in any of their former
proceedings; all those whom they recommended as daring hands and
fit for the work; all those whose companions had been taken in the
riots; and a great number of people who were relatives or friends
of felons in the jail. This last class included, not only the most
desperate and utterly abandoned villains in London, but some who
were comparatively innocent. There was more than one woman there,
disguised in man's attire, and bent upon the rescue of a child or
brother. There were the two sons of a man who lay under sentence
of death, and who was to be executed along with three others, on
the next day but one. There was a great parry of boys whose
fellow-pickpockets were in the prison; and at the skirts of all,
a score of miserable women, outcasts from the world, seeking to
release some other fallen creature as miserable as themselves, or
moved by a general sympathy perhaps--God knows--with all who were
without hope, and wretched.

Old swords, and pistols without ball or powder; sledge-hammers,
knives, axes, saws, and weapons pillaged from the butchers' shops;
a forest of iron bars and wooden clubs; long ladders for scaling
the walls, each carried on the shoulders of a dozen men; lighted
torches; tow smeared with pitch, and tar, and brimstone; staves
roughly plucked from fence and paling; and even crutches taken from
crippled beggars in the streets; composed their arms. When all was
ready, Hugh and Dennis, with Simon Tappertit between them, led the
way. Roaring and chafing like an angry sea, the crowd pressed
after them.

Instead of going straight down Holborn to the jail, as all
expected, their leaders took the way to Clerkenwell, and pouring
down a quiet street, halted before a locksmith's house--the Golden
Key.

'Beat at the door,' cried Hugh to the men about him. 'We want one
of his craft to-night. Beat it in, if no one answers.'

The shop was shut. Both door and shutters were of a strong and
sturdy kind, and they knocked without effect. But the impatient
crowd raising a cry of 'Set fire to the house!' and torches being
passed to the front, an upper window was thrown open, and the stout
old locksmith stood before them.

'What now, you villains!' he demanded. 'Where is my daughter?'

'Ask no questions of us, old man,' retorted Hugh, waving his
comrades to be silent, 'but come down, and bring the tools of your
trade. We want you.'

'Want me!' cried the locksmith, glancing at the regimental dress he
wore: 'Ay, and if some that I could name possessed the hearts of
mice, ye should have had me long ago. Mark me, my lad--and you
about him do the same. There are a score among ye whom I see now
and know, who are dead men from this hour. Begone! and rob an
undertaker's while you can! You'll want some coffins before long.'

'Will you come down?' cried Hugh.

'Will you give me my daughter, ruffian?' cried the locksmith.

'I know nothing of her,' Hugh rejoined. 'Burn the door!'

'Stop!' cried the locksmith, in a voice that made them falter--
presenting, as he spoke, a gun. 'Let an old man do that. You can
spare him better.'

The young fellow who held the light, and who was stooping down
before the door, rose hastily at these words, and fell back. The
locksmith ran his eye along the upturned faces, and kept the weapon
levelled at the threshold of his house. It had no other rest than
his shoulder, but was as steady as the house itself.

'Let the man who does it, take heed to his prayers,' he said
firmly; 'I warn him.'

Snatching a to

Barnaby Rudge, 80's Riots by Charles Dickens Hypertext Meanings and Commentaries from the Encyclopedia of the Self by Mark ZimmermanReturn to Part 1 of 2

Barnaby Rudge, 80's Riots
by Charles Dickens
Hypertext Meanings and Commentaries
from the Encyclopedia of the Self
by Mark Zimmerman
Return to Part 1 of 2