Mr. James is right so far, and it
_is_ true; except that there was no fighting, merely unarmed and
peaceable people attacked by ruffians armed with bludgeons."

"And they put up with that?" said Dick, with the first unpleasant
expression I had seen on his good-tempered face.

Said I, reddening: "We _had_ to put up with it; we couldn't help it."

The old man looked at me keenly, and said: "You seem to know a great deal
about it, neighbour! And is it really true that nothing came of it?"

"This came of it," said I, "that a good many people were sent to prison
because of it."

"What, of the bludgeoners?" said the old man. "Poor devils!"

"No, no," said I, "of the bludgeoned."

Said the old man rather severely: "Friend, I expect that you have been
reading some rotten collection of lies, and have been taken in by it too
easily."

"I assure you," said I, "what I have been saying is true."

"Well, well, I am sure you think so, neighbour," said the old man, "but I
don't see why you should be so cocksure."

As I couldn't explain why, I held my tongue. Meanwhile Dick, who had
been sitting with knit brows, cogitating, spoke at last, and said gently
and rather sadly:

"How strange to think that there have been men like ourselves, and living
in this beautiful and happy country, who I suppose had feelings and
affections like ourselves, who could yet do such dreadful things."

"Yes," said I, in a didactic tone; "yet after all, even those days were a
great improvement on the days that had gone before them. Have you not
read of the Mediaeval period, and the ferocity of its criminal laws; and
how in those days men fairly seemed to have enjoyed tormenting their
fellow men?--nay, for the matter of that, they made their God a tormentor
and a jailer rather than anything else."

"Yes," said Dick, "there are good books on that period also, some of
which I have read. But as to the great improvement of the nineteenth
century, I don't see it. After all, the Mediaeval folk acted after their
conscience, as your remark about their God (which is true) shows, and
they were ready to bear what they inflicted on others; whereas the
nineteenth century ones were hypocrites, and pretended to be humane, and
yet went on tormenting those whom they dared to treat so by shutting them
up in prison, for no reason at all, except that they were what they
themselves, the prison-masters, had forced them to be. O, it's horrible
to think of!"

"B