ock 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 t