mmoned to
that work, diverted him, for the time, from these painful reflections,
and gave his thoughts a more congenial occupation.

They were not all three carried off together, but in two parties;
Barnaby and his father, going by one road in the centre of a body of
foot; and Hugh, fast bound upon a horse, and strongly guarded by a troop
of cavalry, being taken by another.

They had no opportunity for the least communication, in the short
interval which preceded their departure; being kept strictly apart. Hugh
only observed that Barnaby walked with a drooping head among his guard,
and, without raising his eyes, that he tried to wave his fettered hand
when he passed. For himself, he buoyed up his courage as he rode along,
with the assurance that the mob would force his jail wherever it might
be, and set him at liberty. But when they got into London, and more
especially into Fleet Market, lately the stronghold of the rioters,
where the military were rooting out the last remnant of the crowd, he
saw that this hope was gone, and felt that he was riding to his death.

Chapter 70

Mr Dennis having despatched this piece of business without any personal
hurt or inconvenience, and having now retired into the tranquil
respectability of private life, resolved to solace himself with half an
hour or so of female society. With this amiable purpose in his mind,
he bent his steps towards the house where Dolly and Miss Haredale were
still confined, and whither Miss Miggs had also been removed by order of
Mr Simon Tappertit.

As he walked along the streets with his leather gloves clasped
behind him, and his face indicative of cheerful thought and pleasant
calculation, Mr Dennis might have been likened unto a farmer ruminating
among his crops, and enjoying by anticipation the bountiful gifts of
Providence. Look where he would, some heap of ruins afforded him rich
promise of a working off; the whole town appeared to have been ploughed
and sown, and nurtured by most genial weather; and a goodly harvest was
at hand.

Having taken up arms and resorted to deeds of violence, with the great
main object of preserving the Old Bailey in all its purity, and the
gallows in all its pristine usefulness and moral grandeur, it would
perhaps be going too far to assert that Mr Dennis had ever distinctly
contemplated and foreseen this happy state of things. He rather looked
upon it as one of those beautiful dispensations which are inscrutably