t last it seemed to
occur to him that he ought to intercept me.

"But, sir, Mr. Halifax said--"

"I am going to look for Mr. Halifax."

And I escaped outside. Anything beyond his literal duty did not strike
the faithful Jem. He stood on the door-sill, and gazed after me with a
hopeless expression.

"I s'pose you mun have your way, sir; but Mr. Halifax said, 'Jem, you
stop y'ere,'--and y'ere I stop."

He went in, and I heard him bolting the door, with a sullen
determination, as if he would have kept guard against it--waiting for
John--until doomsday.

I stole along the dark alley into the street. It was very silent--I
need not have borrowed Jem's exterior, in order to creep through a
throng of maddened rioters. There was no sign of any such, except that
under one of the three oil-lamps that lit the night-darkness at Norton
Bury lay a few smouldering hanks of hemp, well resined. They, then,
had thought of that dreadful engine of destruction--fire. Had my
terrors been true? Our house--and perhaps John within it!

On I ran, speeded by a dull murmur, which I fancied I heard; but still
there was no one in the street--no one except the Abbey-watchman
lounging in his box. I roused him, and asked if all was safe?--where
were the rioters?

"What rioters?"

"At Abel Fletcher's mill; they may be at his house now--"

"Ay, I think they be."

"And will not one man in the town help him; no constables--no law?"

"Oh! he's a Quaker; the law don't help Quakers."

That was the truth--the hard, grinding truth--in those days. Liberty,
justice, were idle names to Nonconformists of every kind; and all they
knew of the glorious constitution of English law was when its iron hand
was turned against them.

I had forgotten this; bitterly I remembered it now. So wasting no more
words, I flew along the church-yard, until I saw, shining against the
boles of the chestnut-trees, a red light. It was one of the hempen
torches. Now, at last, I had got in the midst of that small body of
men, "the rioters."

They were a mere handful--not above two score--apparently the relics of
the band which had attacked the mill, joined with a few plough-lads
from the country around. But they were desperate; they had come up the
Coltham road so quietly, that, except this faint murmur, neither I nor
any one in the town could have told they were near. Wherever they had
been ransacking, as yet they had not attacked my father's house; it
stood