Note 1. This part of the story is all quite true, and I am not putting into Rose’s lips, in her conversation with Mr Tyrrel, one word which she did not really utter.
Chapter Twenty Five.
In Colchester Castle.
The whole population of Much Bentley seemed to have turned out to witness the arrest at the Blue Bell. Some were kindly and sympathising, some bitter and full of taunts; but the greater number were simply inquisitive, neither friendly nor hostile, but gossipping. It was now four o’clock, a time at which half the people were up in the village, and many a woman rose an hour earlier than her wont, in order to see the strange sight. There were the carpenters with baskets of tools slung over their shoulders; the gardeners with rake or hoe; the labourers with their spades; the fishermen with their nets.
The Colne oyster-fishery is the oldest of all known fisheries in England, and its fame had reached imperial Rome itself, nearly two thousand years ago, when the Emperor Caligula came over to England partly for the purpose of tasting the Colchester oyster. The oysters are taken in the Colne and placed in pits, where they are fattened till they reach the size of a silver oyster preserved among the town treasures. In April or May, when the baby oyster first appears in the river, it looks like a drop from a tallow candle; but in twenty-four hours the shell begins to form. The value of the oyster spawn (as the baby oysters are called) in the river, is reckoned at twenty thousand pounds; and from five to ten thousand pounds’ worth of oysters is sold every year.
“Well, Master Mount, how like you your new pair o’ bracelets?” said one of the fishermen, as William Mount was led out, and his hands tied with a rough cord.
“Friend, I count it honour to bear for my Lord that which He first bare for me,” was the meek answer.