“What, man, pay and look joyous. What will all your hoard of guineas be to you after Monday?” cried the younger man.
“'Twill be worth twenty-one shillings for every guinea, if you must know,” replied the farmer.
“Nay, sir, you know well that there will be no use for your guineas at the Day of Judgment, which, as surely as Dick Pritchard is a prophet, will happen on Monday,” said the other.
“I'm ready to run the chance, i' the face o' the Prophet Pritchard,” said the farmer. “Ay, and to show what's in me, I am ready 'twixt now and Sunday to buy any property at a reasonable discount rate that any believer in Dick Pritchard may wish to sell.”
“Good for you, farmer—good for you!” shouted a dozen voices, with the applause of rattling pewters on the table.
“Let Dick stick to his trade—water and not fire is his quality; he'd best leave the Day of Judgment in subtler hands,” growled a small, red-faced man, who was cooling himself this Summer day with Jamaica rum.
There was some more laughter, but it was not of a hearty sort; there was a forced gaiety in it that Wesley easily detected.
“By my troth, the fellow's prophecy hath done a good turn to the maltster; there hath been more swilling, hot and cold, since he spoke a week ago yesterday, than in any month of ordinary calm weather, without a sniff of brimstone in it,” said Mr. Hone, the surgeon of the revenue men, who was in the act of facing a huge beef-steak with onions and a potato baked with a sauce of tansy.
“Small blame to the drouthy ones; they know full well that by this day week they will be ready to pay Plymouth prices for a mugful o' something cooling,” remarked a traveller.
“Gentlemen and friends, all, I make bold enough to affirm that this matter is too grave an one to be jested on or to be scoffed at,” said a tall, pale-faced young man. “I tell you, sirs, that there may be more in this thing than some of us suspect.”