The loyal horse, indeed, were anxious for the Vicar’s safety, seeing this rabble swarm into the middle of the High Street, through the double line of riders that had kept them back till now. They were riding forward already, but the parson waved them back.
The Vicar stood now in the thick of a roaring crowd that had him at its mercy. Sir Jasper, who loved a leal man, tried to get his horse a little nearer, but could not without riding down defenceless folk; and, while he and his friends were in grave anxiety and doubt, a sudden hum of laughter came from the jostling crowd.
“Shoulder him, lads!” cried one burly fellow.
Five other stalwarts took up the cry, and the Vicar, protesting with great cheeriness, was lifted shoulder high. And gradually it grew clear to the Loyal Meet that the parson, as he had boasted, was safe—nay, was beloved—among these working-folk of Langton.
They moved up the street, followed by the rabble, and the two lines of the Loyal Meet were facing each other once more across the emptying roadway. And by and by, from the old church on the hill, a furious peal rang out. The Vicar, who was a keen horseman himself, had named his bells “a team of six”; and never in its history, perhaps, had the team been driven with such recklessness. The parson held one rope—one rein, as he preferred to call it—and knew how to handle it. But his five allies had only goodwill to prompt them in their attempt to ring a peal.
There was noise enough, to be sure; and across the uproar another music sounded—music less full-bodied, but piercing, urgent, not to be denied.
Sir Jasper lifted his head, as a good hound does when he hears the horn. “Gentlemen,” he said, “the pipes, the blessed pipes! D’ye hear them? The Prince is near.”
They scarcely heard the jangling bells. Keen, swift, triumphant, the sweetest music in the world came louder and louder round the bend of Langton Street. The riders could not sit still in saddle, but were drumming lightly with their feet, as if their stirrups were a dancing-floor. Their horses fidgeted and neighed.
And then Prince Charles Edward came into Langton, and these gentry of the Loyal Meet forgot how desolate and cold the dawn had been. Some of them had waited thirty years for this one moment; others, the youngsters and the middle-aged, had been reared on legends of that unhappy ’15 Rising which had not chilled the faith of Lancashire. And all seemed worth while now, here in the sunlit street, that was wet and glistening with the late persistent rain.
The Prince rode alone, his officers a few yards in the rear, and behind them the strange army, made up of Scottish gentry, of Highlanders in kilts, of plain Lowland farmers armed with rusty swords, with scythe-blades fixed on six-foot poles, with any weapon that good luck had given to their hands.