“Ay,” said Parkin, “but this is at night; and, now I think of it, I met him t'other day, about dusk, galloping east, as hard as he could go.”
“My information is from a sure source,” said Grotait, stiffly.
Parkin.—“What is to be done?”
Jobson.—“Is he worth another strike?”
Potter.—“The time is unfavorable: here's a slap of dull trade.”
The three then put their heads together, and various plans were suggested and discussed, and, as the parties were not now before the public, that horror of gunpowder, vitriol, and life-preservers, which figured in their notices and resolutions, did not appear in their conversation. Grotait alone was silent and doubtful. This Grotait was the greatest fanatic of the four, and, like all fanatics, capable of vast cruelty: but his cruelty lay in his head, rather than in his heart. Out of Trade questions, the man, though vain and arrogant, was of a genial and rather a kindly nature; and, even in Trade questions, being more intelligent than his fellows, he was sometimes infested with a gleam of humanity.
His bigotry was, at this moment, disturbed by a visitation of that kind.
“I'm perplexed,” said he: “I don't often hesitate on a Trade question neither. But the men we have done were always low-lived blackguards, who would have destroyed us, if we had not disabled them. Now this Little is a decent young chap. He struck at the root of our Trades, so long as he wrought openly. But on the sly, and nobody knowing but ourselves, mightn't it be as well to shut our eyes a bit? My informant is not in trade.”
The other three took a more personal view of the matter. Little was outwitting, and resisting them. They saw nothing for it but to stop him, by hook or by crook.
While they sat debating his case in whispers, and with their heads so close you might have covered them all with a tea-tray, a clear musical voice was heard to speak to the barmaid, and, by her direction, in walked into the council-chamber—Mr. Henry Little.