“Bless you, miss, you can’t do nothing with the likes of them, the born rascals; you would, may be, get a stone yourself and what would the master say to that?”
“Oh! what are they doing now?” as a wild hurrah arose, and all sorts of confused noises. Mrs Pucklechurch had locked the door on her prisoner, but she was equally curious, and anxious for her old man; so, with one accord, they hurried up the stairs together, and looked out at an upper window, whence they could only see a wild crowd of hats, smock-frocks, and women’s clothes gathering about a heap where the poor machine used to stand, and whence a cloud of smoke began to rise, followed by a jet of flame, fed no doubt by the quantity of straw and chaff lying about. Sophy and Betty both shrieked and exclaimed, but Betty’s mind was chiefly full of her old man, and she saw his straw hat at last. He was standing in front of the verandah, before the front door, and, as they threw the window open, they heard his gruff voice—
“Not I. Be off with you! I baint a-going to give my master’s property to a lot of rapscallion thieves and robbers like you, as should know better.”
Then came the answer, “We don’t want none of his property. Only his guns and his money for the cause of the people.” And big sticks were brandished, and the throng thickened.
“Oh, don’t ye hurt he!” screamed Betty. “He that never did you no harm! Don’t ye! Oh, Dan Hewlett! Oh-oh!”
“Then throw us out the guns, old woman,” called up the black-faced figure, “and we’ll let him be.”
“If you do,” shouted Pucklechurch—and then there was a rush in on him, and they could see no more, for he must have backed under the verandah. Betty made a dash for the front stairs, to come to his help, Sophy after her; but, before they could even tumble to the bottom, there was a change in the cries—
“The soldiers! the soldiers! Oh-hoo-hoo-hoo!” There was a scamper and a scurry, a trampling of horses. The two trembling hands, getting in each other’s way, unfastened the door, which was not even locked, and beheld Pucklechurch gathering himself up with a bleeding head, a cloud of smoke and flame, and helmets and silver lace glancing through it. There had been no need to read the Riot Act; the enemy were tearing along all ways over the fields, except a few whom the horsemen had intercepted. Dan Hewlett and the black-faced leader, without his long nose, were two; the other three were—among the loudest, poor Softy Sam, who had been yelling wildly—big lads, or young men, one from Downhill, the others nearer home, howling and sobbing and praying to be let go. Captain Carbonel’s first thought was whether Pucklechurch was hurt, but the old man was standing up scratching his head, and Betty hovering over him. Then his eyes fell on his sister-in-law, and he exclaimed—
“You here, Sophy! Your sister is very anxious!”
But the fire was by this time getting ahead, and no one could attend to anything else. The prisoners were put into the servants’ hall, and locked in; the horses were tied up at a safe distance, the poor things rearing with alarm at the flame; the men were, under Sir Harry Hartman and Captain Carbonel’s orders, made to form a line from the pond, and hand on the pails and buckets that were available; but these were not very many, though the numbers of helpers were increased by the maids, who had crept back from the orchard, and by the shepherd and some even of the mob, conscious that they had been only lookers on, and “hadn’t done no harm.”