ven in mockery; his tone and manner were
redolent of it, insolently so. The two gentlemen looked on in
discomfort, wondering what it meant; Lady Isabel hid her face as best
she could, terrified to death lest his eyes should fall on it: while the
spectators, several of whom had collected now, listened with interest,
especially some farm laborers of Squire Pinner's who had happened to be
passing.

"You contemptible worm!" cried Miss Carlyle, "do you think you can
outrage me with impunity as you, by your presence in it, are outraging
West Lynne? Out upon you for a bold, bad man!"

Now Miss Corny, in so speaking, had certainly no thought of present and
immediate punishment for the gentleman; but it appeared that the mob
around had. The motion was commented by those stout-shouldered laborers.
Whether excited thereto by the words of Miss Carlyle--who, whatever may
have been her faults of manner, held the respect of the neighborhood,
and was looked up to only in a less degree than her brother; whether
Squire Pinner, their master, had let drop, in their hearing, a word of
the ducking he had hinted at, when at East Lynne, or whether their own
feelings alone spurred them on, was best known to the men themselves.
Certain it is, that the ominous sound of "Duck him," was breathed forth
by a voice, and it was caught up and echoed around.

"Duck him! Duck him! The pond be close at hand. Let's give him a taste
of his deservings! What do he the scum, turn himself up at West Lynne
for, bearding Mr. Carlyle? What have he done with Lady Isabel? _Him_
put up for others at West Lynne! West Lynne's respectable, it don't want
him; it have got a better man; it won't have a villain. Now, lads!"

His face turned white, and he trembled in his shoes--worthless men are
frequently cowards. Lady Isabel trembled in hers; and well she might,
hearing that one allusion. They set upon him, twenty pairs of hands at
least, strong, rough, determined hands; not to speak of the tagrag's
help, who went in with cuffs, and kicks, and pokes, and taunts, and
cheers, and a demoniac dance.

They dragged him through a gap in the hedge, a gap that no baby could
have got through in a cool moment; but most of us know the difference
between coolness and excitement. The hedge was extensively damaged, but
Justice Hare, to whom it belonged, would forgive that. Mr. Drake and the
lawyer--for the other was a lawyer--were utterly powerless to stop
the catastrophe. "If they d