"In bursts of outrage spread your judgment wide,
And to your wrath cry out, `Be thou our guide.'"
_Wordsworth_.
Sophy was endeavouring to make the children remember who Joseph was, and
thinking them unusually stupid, idle, and talkative, when, without
ceremony, the door was banged open, and in tramped Hoglah Todd, with the
baby in her arms, her sun-bonnet on her neck, and her black hair
sticking wildly out. "Please, ma'am," she began, "Jack Swing is up
a-breaking the machine, and mother says you are to go to Farmer
Pearson's to be safe out of the way!"
"Hoggie Todd," began Mrs Thorpe, "that's not the way to come into
school," but she could not finish, for voices broke out above the
regulation school hush: "Yes, yes, father said," and "Our Jem said," and
it ended in "Jack Swing's a-coming to break up the machine." Only one
or two said, "Mother said as how it was a shame, and they'd get into
trouble."
"Your mother sent you?" said Sophy to Hoglah.
"Yes, ma'am. She's gone up herself to tell madam, and take she to
Pearson's, and her said you'd better go there, back ways, or else stay
here with governess till 'twas quieted down."
"Hark! They are holloaing."
Strange sounds were in fact to be heard, and the children, losing all
sense of discipline, made a rush to snatch hats and bonnets, and poured
out in a throng, tumbling over one another, Hoglah among the foremost.
Mrs Thorpe, much terrified, began to clasp her hands and say, "Oh dear!
oh dear, the wicked, ungrateful men, that they should do such things.
Oh! Miss Sophy, you will stay here, won't you?"
"No, I must go and see after my sister and the children," said Sophy,
already at the door.
"But they'll be at Mr Pearson's. The girl said so. Oh, stay, ma'am!
Don't venture. Pray, pray--"
But Sophy had the door open, and with "I can't. Thank you, no, I
can't."
There were the confused sounds of howling and singing on the top of the
hill. Betsy Seddon, at her cottage door, called out, "Don't go up
there, miss; it's no place for the likes of you!" but Sophy only
answered, "My sister," and dashed on.
She could get into a field of Edmund's by scrambling over a difficult
gate, and, impelled by the sight of some rough-looking men slouching
along, she got over it--she hardly knew how--and, after crossing it,
came upon all the cows, pigs, and horses, with Pucklechurch presiding
over them. He, too, said, "Doan't ye go up there, Miss Sophy. Them
mischievous chaps will be after them pigs, fools as they be, so I
brought the poor dumb things out of the way of them, and you'd better be
shut of it too, miss."
"But, my sister, Master Pucklechurch! I must see to her."
"She'll be safe enow, miss. They don't lift a hand to folks, as I've
heard, but I'll do my duty by the beastises."
He certainly seemed more bent on his duty to the "beastises" than that
to his wife or his master's wife; and yet, when Sophy proved deaf to all
his persuasions, he muttered, "Wilful must to water, and Wilful must
drink. But, ah! yon beastises be safe enow, poor dumb things, so I'll
e'en go after the maid, to see as her runs into no harm. She be a fine,
spirity maid whatsome'er."
So on he plodded, in the rear of Sophy, who, with eager foot, had
crossed the sloping home-field, and gained the straw yard, all deserted
now except by the fowls. The red game cock was scratching and crowing
there, as if the rabble rout were not plainly to be seen straggling
along the drive.
Still there was time for Sophy to fly to the house, where, at the door,
she met Mrs Pucklechurch.
"Bless my soul and honour, Miss Sophy. You here! The mistress, she's
gone with the children to Mr Pearson's, and you'll be in time to catch
her up if you look sharp enough."
"I shall not run away. Some one ought to try to protect my brother's
property."
"Now, don't 'ee, don't 'ee, Miss Sophy. You'll do no good with that
lot, and only get hurt yourself."
But Sophy was not to be persuaded. She went manfully out to the gate,
and shut it in the face of the disguised men, who came swaggering up
towards it.
"What's your business here?" she demanded, in her young, clear voice.
"Come, young woman," said a man in a false nose and a green smock-frock,
but whose voice had a town sound in it, and whose legs and feet were
those of no rustic, "clear out of the way, or it will be the worse for
you!"
"What have you to do here on my brother's ground?" again asked Sophy,
standing there in her straw bonnet and pink cotton frock.
"We don't want to do nothing, miss,"--and that voice she knew for Dan
Hewlett's--"but to have down that new-fangled machine as takes away the
work from the poor."
"What work of yours did it ever take away, Dan Hewlett?" said she.
"Look here! it makes bread cheaper--"
She had thought before of the chain of arguments, but they would not
come in the face of the emergency; and besides, she felt that her voice
would not carry her words beyond the three or four men who were close to
the gate. She might as well have spoken to the raging sea when, as the
gate was shaken, she went on with a fresh start, "I call it most
cowardly and ungrateful--"
At that moment she was seized from behind by two great brawny arms, and
borne backward, struggling helplessly like a lamb in a bear's embrace.
She saw that, not only was the gate burst in, but that the throng were
pressing in from the garden side, and she was not released until she was
set down in Mrs Pucklechurch's kitchen, and a gruff voice said, rather
as if to a little child, "Bide where you be, and no one will go for to
hurt you."
It was a huge figure, with a woman's bonnet stuck upright over his
chalked face, and a red cloak covering his smock-frock, and he was gone
the next moment, while Mrs Pucklechurch, screaming and sobbing,
clutched at Sophy, and held her tight, with, "Now, don't, Miss Sophy,
don't ye! Bide still, I say!"
"But, Edmund's machine! His things and all!" gasped Sophy, still
struggling.
"Bless you, miss, you can't do nothing with the likes of them, the born
rascals; you would, may be, get a stone yourself and what would the
master say to that?"
"Oh! what are they doing now?" as a wild hurrah arose, and all sorts of
confused noises. Mrs Pucklechurch had locked the door on her prisoner,
but she was equally curious, and anxious for her old man; so, with one
accord, they hurried up the stairs together, and looked out at an upper
window, whence they could only see a wild crowd of hats, smock-frocks,
and women's clothes gathering about a heap where the poor machine used
to stand, and whence a cloud of smoke began to rise, followed by a jet
of flame, fed no doubt by the quantity of straw and chaff lying about.
Sophy and Betty both shrieked and exclaimed, but Betty's mind was
chiefly full of her old man, and she saw his straw hat at last. He was
standing in front of the verandah, before the front door, and, as they
threw the window open, they heard his gruff voice--
"Not I. Be off with you! I baint a-going to give my master's property
to a lot of rapscallion thieves and robbers like you, as should know
better."
Then came the answer, "We don't want none of his property. Only his
guns and his money for the cause of the people." And big sticks were
brandished, and the throng thickened.
"Oh, don't ye hurt he!" screamed Betty. "He that never did you no harm!
Don't ye! Oh, Dan Hewlett! Oh-oh!"
"Then throw us out the guns, old woman," called up the black-faced
figure, "and we'll let him be."
"If you do," shouted Pucklechurch--and then there was a rush in on him,
and they could see no more, for he must have backed under the verandah.
Betty made a dash for the front stairs, to come to his help, Sophy after
her; but, before they could even tumble to the bottom, there was a
change in the cries--
"The soldiers! the soldiers! Oh-hoo-hoo-hoo!" There was a scamper and
a scurry, a trampling of horses. The two trembling hands, getting in
each other's way, unfastened the door, which was not even locked, and
beheld Pucklechurch gathering himself up with a bleeding head, a cloud
of smoke and flame, and helmets and silver lace glancing through it.
There had been no need to read the Riot Act; the enemy were tearing
along all ways over the fields, except a few whom the horsemen had
intercepted. Dan Hewlett and the black-faced leader, without his long
nose, were two; the other three were--among the loudest, poor Softy Sam,
who had been yelling wildly--big lads, or young men, one from Downhill,
the others nearer home, howling and sobbing and praying to be let go.
Captain Carbonel's first thought was whether Pucklechurch was hurt, but
the old man was standing up scratching his head, and Betty hovering over
him. Then his eyes fell on his sister-in-law, and he exclaimed--
"You here, Sophy! Your sister is very anxious!"
But the fire was by this time getting ahead, and no one could attend to
anything else. The prisoners were put into the servants' hall, and
locked in; the horses were tied up at a safe distance, the poor things
rearing with alarm at the flame; the men were, under Sir Harry Hartman
and Captain Carbonel's orders, made to form a line from the pond, and
hand on the pails and buckets that were available; but these were not
very many, though the numbers of helpers were increased by the maids,
who had crept back from the orchard, and by the shepherd and some even
of the mob, conscious that they had been only lookers on, and "hadn't
done no harm."
It was a dry season, and the flames spread, catching the big barn, and
then seeming to fly in great flakes like a devouring winged thing to the
Pucklechurches' thatch. Betty and her husband flew to fling out their
more valued possessions, and were just in time to save them; but thence
the fire, just as the water in the nearest pond was drying up, caught a
hold on the dairy and the old thatched part of the farmhouse.
Bellowings were heard from the captives that they would be burnt alive,
and some one, it was never known who, let them out, for no sign of them
appeared when all was over, though their prison was untouched by the
fire. For even at that moment the Poppleby fire-engine galloped up the
road, and was hailed with shouts of joy. It had a hose long enough to
reach down to the brook in the meadow, and the hissing bursts of water
poured down did at last check the flames before they had done much harm
to the more modern portion of the house, though all the furniture was
lying tumbled about in heaps on the lawn--Mary's piano, with the baby's
cradle full of crockery on the top of it, and Edmund's writing desk in
the middle of a washing stand all upside down.
The first thing Edmund did when the smoke wreaths alone were lingering
about, was to send his groom down to the cellar, with a jug in his hand,
to bring up some beer, which he proceeded to hand in the best
breakfast-cups to all and sundry of the helpers, including Sir Harry
Hartman, Sophy helping in the distribution with all her might.
"Miss Carbonel, I think?" said Sir Harry, courteously, as she gave him
the cup. "Were you the garrison?"