"Nor am I one to be threatened, neither. Look here—the first one of you who attempted to break into Mr. Fletcher's house I should most certainly have shot. But I'd rather not shoot you, poor, starving fellows! I know what it is to be hungry. I'm sorry for you—sorry from the bottom of my heart."
There was no mistaking that compassionate accent, nor the murmur which followed it.
"But what must us do, Mr. Halifax?" cried Jacob Baines: "us be starved a'most. What's the good o' talking to we?"
John's countenance relaxed. I saw him lift his head and shake his hair back, with that pleased gesture I remember so well of old. He went down to the locked gate.
"Suppose I gave you something to eat, would you listen to me afterwards?"
There arose up a frenzied shout of assent. Poor wretches! they were fighting for no principle, true or false, only for bare life. They would have bartered their very souls for a mouthful of bread.
"You must promise to be peaceable," said John again, very resolutely, as soon as he could obtain a hearing. "You are Norton Bury folk, I know you. I could get every one of you hanged, even though Abel Fletcher is a Quaker. Mind, you'll be peaceable?"
"Ay—ay! Some'at to eat; give us some'at to eat."
John Halifax called out to Jael; bade her bring all the food of every kind that there was in the house, and give it to him out of the parlour-window. She obeyed—I marvel now to think of it—but she implicitly obeyed. Only I heard her fix the bar to the closed front door, and go back, with a strange, sharp sob, to her station at the hall-window.
"Now, my lads, come in!" and he unlocked the gate.