Not daring to follow, or to say another word to the good Bishop, who was known to be a most tender-hearted man, and whose scathing rebuke was therefore far more telling than it would have been in the lips of the military Bishop Mew, who had actually taken the field in person, the wretched creature lingered staring after the retreating figures until they had turned the next corner, and then, gnashing his teeth in impotent shame and rage, he turned towards his own lodgings, and made as though he would have retired thither.
But he was not destined to attain this shelter so speedily as he had thought. A crowd had gathered in the street to hear the Bishop's reprimand, and murmurs of applause and approval had greeted every scathing rebuke. The very fact that the Bishop had not scrupled to speak thus in public to a clergyman showed how greatly his indignation had been aroused; and as the evil creature turned to leave the scene of his humiliation, he found himself suddenly confronted by the brawny blacksmith who had given him a taste of his tongue on another occasion.
"Ho, ho, Sir Priest! so the good Lord Bishop is not a friend to drunkenness and debauchery and savage cruelty! And so the discipline of the Church is relaxed, is it, and its evil servants cannot be touched? Sure that must be a sore matter of regret to so righteous a man as good Mr. Blewer.—Friends," and here he turned his face with a not too pleasant grin upon it towards the crowd now pressing closely round, "since the good gentleman here is debarred from the discipline of the Church, suppose we good citizens give him a taste of such discipline as our town cudgels can bestow."
A yell of delight answered this suggestion, and a hundred staffs were immediately waved in the air. Mr. Blewer's face turned a livid green tint, and he looked at his tormentor with a sickly smile, fumbling in his pocket the while.
"Very good, very good, my merry friend. Thou art quite a wag in thy way," he gasped in his coward terror at the ring of fierce faces around him. "An excellent jest in truth, and one which I will myself tell to the good Bishop when I go to clear myself in his sight of the slanders he has heard against me. All friends of the people have enemies who malign them, and so it has been with me. Here, my good fellow, take that, and bid your friends disperse. I am a man of peace; let us have no unseemly disturbance here in the streets."
He would have pressed a golden guinea into the blacksmith's hand, but that honest rogue turned away with an expression of scorn and disgust.
"Thy money perish with thee!" he cried, in a great access of wrath; and bringing down his heavy staff upon the shoulders of the luckless Mr. Blewer, he shouted out, "Take that, thou coward and craven monster of cruelty! take that and that, and think of Will Wiseman! Would I could break every bone in that wretched body of thine!"
With a yell of pain and terror, and an agonized cry for the watch—which, however, never came—the wretched man sprang away and hurled himself through the crowd, every man of which, who was armed with a stick, hit him a blow as he passed, and every woman snatched at his coat or scratched his face, till his clothing was half torn off his back, and his face was running down with blood; and every one who struck him called out in savage accents, "Remember Will Wiseman!" or, "Take that for Will's sake!" or some phrase like that, till the wretched man must have wished from the very ground of his heart that he had let Will Wiseman alone. And when I heard the story, and how Mr. Blewer had been beaten almost into a jelly ere he reached the shelter of his house, I felt indeed that Will had been avenged, and that God had wrought vengeance even by the hands of the lawless and violent men.
Nor was any notice taken of this outrage by the authorities. I think both the Mayor and the magistrates felt that Mr. Blewer had only met his due. The rebuke of the Bishop was known to them, and there was no desire to take up the cudgels for a creature of such evil notoriety. All the town was sick of bloodshed and confusion, and was breathing once more in the hope of quieter days to come. To raise an inquiry and to punish the ringleaders of the mob would only stir the city into anger and even rebellion once again. So Mr. Blewer made his plaint in vain, and got no redress; and it was said of him that he went to Bristol as soon as he was able to travel, and drunk himself to death there before the year was ended; but of this I know nothing certain. I never saw the miserable creature again, and I can only think it very like him to come to such an end after the disappointments and the violent usage he had received.
The news of this discomfiture of his enemy, and of the vengeance taken upon him by the citizens, did much to hearten up poor Will after his long illness. I told him the story myself as he lay on his pallet bed upon his face—for his poor back was still all raw, and it would be long before his wounds would be healed. But the old spirit was coming back into my comrade, and I saw his eyes glow and flash just in the old way.