g gathered sudden volume, and from
an intermittent murmur, as of a remote sea, swelled in a moment into a
roar of menace. And as a mob is capable of deeds from which the members
who compose it would severally shrink, as nothing is so pitiless,
nothing so unreasoning, so in the sound of its voice is a note that
appals all but the hardiest. Soane was no coward. A year before he had
been present at the siege of Bedford House by the Spitalfields weavers,
where swords were drawn and much blood was spilled, while the gentlemen
of the clubs and coffee-houses looked on as at a play; but even he felt
a slackening of the pulse as he listened. And with the Reverend
Frederick it was different. He was not framed for danger. When the
smoking glare of the links which the ringleaders carried began to dance
and flicker on the opposite houses, he looked about him with a wild eye,
and had already taken two steps towards the door, when it opened.

It admitted two men about Sir George's age, or a little younger. One,
after glancing round, passed hurriedly to the window and looked out; the
other sank into the nearest chair, and, fanning himself with his hat,
muttered a querulous oath.

'My dear lord!' cried the Reverend Frederick, hastening to his
side--and it is noteworthy that he forgot even his panic in the old
habit of reverence--'What an escape! To think that a life so valuable as
your lordship's should lie at the mercy of those wretches! I shudder at
the thought of what might have happened.'

'Fan me, Tommy' was the answer. And Lord Almeric, an excessively pale,
excessively thin young man, handed his hat with a gesture of exhaustion
to the obsequious tutor. 'Fan me; that is a good soul. Positively I am
suffocated with the smell of those creatures! Worse than horses, I
assure you. There, again! What a pother about a common fellow! 'Pon
honour, I don't know what the world is coming to!'

'Nor I,' Mr. Thomasson answered, hanging over him with assiduity and
concern on his countenance. 'It is not to be comprehended.'

'No, 'pon honour it is not!' my lord agreed. And then, feeling a little
recovered, 'Dunborough,' he asked, 'what are they doing?'

'Hanging you, my dear fellow!' the other answered from the window, where
he had taken his place within a pace of Soane, but without discovering
him. He spoke in the full boisterous tone of one in perfect health and
spirits, perfectly satisfied with himself, and perfectly heedless
of others.