It was some time before the bull could be got into position, and he showed at first no signs of fight.
Presently Gratian exclaimed:
"There is little Mr. Dacres elbowing through the crowd; I knew he was dying to come. Now he has said his prayers, I suppose he thinks he is free to do so. And do look at that little woman in the yellow hood, pushing and fighting to get a place on the window-sill of the house by Penniless Porch. What a crowd! Who could have believed so many people lived in Wells? There is seldom a creature to be seen. When we drove through the market-place the other day there was only an old woman by the 'Cross,' selling potatoes."
"Ah! madam," exclaimed an old gentleman, who was standing behind Gratian's chair, and heard her remark, "the best days of the spectacle are over—quite over. Now, in Dean Lukin's time, I have known lords and ladies and their suite present, and a really genteel crowd assembled, instead of the riff-raff of to-day." The old man sighed, and taking a pinch of snuff from his tortoiseshell snuff-box, handed it to Lord Maythorne. "The bull-baiting at Wells, sir, was sought after by the élite of the county and neighbourhood. Why, sir, I have seen coaches with four horses come in from Bath full of lords and ladies and great folks. But the times are changing—the times are changing! And, sir, when a Bishop and a Dean are 'loo warm' about a great spectacle, we can't expect others to be hot!—eh?"
Lord Maythorne laughed cynically; and the old man, a veteran of Wells, whose memory went back to at least sixty fifths of Novembers, felt his sleeve sharply pulled by the master of the shop.
"Have a care—have a care what you say, Mr. Harte. Don't be so free; you are talking to a real lord, who is visiting at the palace."
The poor old man was fairly silenced by the news; he retired to a remote corner, trembling and abashed, and the glory of the bull-baiting was over for him.
"A real lord!" he murmured, "and I've been talking to him as if he were just nobody. Dear, dear—dear me!"
The sport began in good earnest about one o'clock. The backers pricked up the dogs to the onslaught, and cries and shouts resounded.
The bull, at first strangely stoical and unmoved, with its large brown eyes staring calmly at the yelping, bounding dogs, was at length lashed to fury. With a loud and angry bellow he tossed his assailants hither and thither, and again and again the mangled bodies of the dogs were hurled by the horns of the bull outside the barriers amongst the shrieking crowd.