Once she encountered some men riotously returning from the sacking of the house of the collector of the latest poll-tax. Some staggered under the weight of the valuables which they had carried off, while others staggered under the strong wines which they had poured down their throats. Her quick indignation was aroused.
"Thieves! Robbers! Despoilers! How can ye so bring disgrace on the Great Society!"
But the leader only laughed, and called out in his thickened voice:—
"Nonsense, girl! A poll-tax collector—'tis no thievery, my dear, but a putting back into our own pockets what he did take from ours." And they passed on, laughing and hiccoughing.
Another time she came across a crowd hanging on the words of an evil-faced man, who was urging them to attack a neighboring castle.
"It will not be the only castle to fall before us," he boasted.
It disheartened her to see this fellow seeking his own ends under the pretence of the common good.
"How long since was it that Sir John dismissed you as a dishonest bailiff?" she cried. And the fellow turned purple and then took to his heels, followed by the jeers of the crowd. She did what she could, but she realized that it was but little. How long before Robert Annys would return to them? How long?
One day Richard Meryl came back. He approached the village at a moment when a large crowd had gathered about one who was holding forth on the ever popular text of Adam and Eve.
"'Adam delved and Eve span,'" the fellow was saying. "So ho! where, then, was our great gentleman? Where, then, was our fine Lord looking down from his costly manor-house upon his men sweating and toiling in the fields? And where was the fine lady lolling at her ease, wrapped in dainty raiments fashioned by the hand of others? If Eve span not she went naked, and if her lord delved not he went hungry. And now tell me, if the good God saw fit to make the world in the first place only of workers and no laggards, who, then, brought the laggards into the world?"