though in a moment ready. Squire John Whichehalse (not
the baron) and Parson Powell* caught him (two or three months before my
return) in Farley farmhouse, near Brendon. He had been up at our house
several times; and Lizzie thought a great deal of him. And well I know
that if at that time I had been in the neighbourhood, he should not have
been taken so easily.

* Not our parson Bowden, nor any more a friend of his. Our
Parson Bowden never had naught whatever to do with it; and
never smoked a pipe with Parson Powell after it.--J.R.

John Birch, the farmer who had sheltered him, was so fearful of
punishment, that he hanged himself, in a few days' time, and even before
he was apprehended. But nothing was done to Grace Howe, of Bridgeball,
who had been Wade's greatest comforter; neither was anything done to us;
although Eliza had added greatly to mother's alarm and danger by falling
upon Rector Powell, and most soundly rating him for his meanness,
and his cruelty, and cowardice, as she called it, in setting men
with firearms upon a poor helpless fugitive, and robbing all our
neighbourhood of its fame for hospitality. However, by means of Sergeant
Bloxham, and his good report of us, as well as by virtue of Wade's
confession (which proved of use to the Government) my mother escaped all
penalties.

It is likely enough that good folk will think it hard upon our
neighbourhood to be threatened, and sometimes heavily punished, for
kindness and humanity; and yet to be left to help ourselves against
tyranny, and base rapine. And now at last our gorge was risen, and
our hearts in tumult. We had borne our troubles long, as a wise and
wholesome chastisement; quite content to have some few things of our own
unmeddled with. But what could a man dare to call his own, or what right
could he have to wish for it, while he left his wife and children at the
pleasure of any stranger?

The people came flocking all around me, at the blacksmith's forge, and
the Brendon alehouse; and I could scarce come out of church, but they
got me among the tombstones. They all agreed that I was bound to take
command and management. I bade them go to the magistrates, but they
said they had been too often. Then I told them that I had no wits for
ordering of an armament, although I could find fault enough with the one
which had not succeeded. But they would hearken to none of this.

All they said was 'Try to lead us; and we will try not to run