"I zay, young man, didst ever know what it was to be pretty nigh vamished?"
"Ay, many a time."
The answer, so brief, so unexpected, struck a great hush into the throng. Then the same voice cried—
"Speak up, man! we won't hurt 'ee! You be one o' we!"
"No, I am not one of you. I'd be ashamed to come in the night and burn my master's house down."
I expected an outbreak, but none came. They listened, as it were by compulsion, to the clear, manly voice that had not in it one shade of fear.
"What do you do it for?" John continued. "All because he would not sell you, or give you, his wheat. Even so—it was HIS wheat, not yours. May not a man do what he likes with his own?"
The argument seemed to strike home. There is always a lurking sense of rude justice in a mob—at least a British mob.
"Don't you see how foolish you were?—You tried threats, too. Now you all know Mr. Fletcher; you are his men—some of you. He is not a man to be threatened."
This seemed to be taken rather angrily; but John went on speaking, as if he did not observe the fact.