“If I were alone I would not budge,” said the Fleming with a sternness in his blue eyes. “But there are the old folk and the little ones. We have left our own land and come where the wool was; it is now time for the work to come to us.”
“I will warrant you it will,” said Master Gay. “But are you going to leave your looms for them to burn?”
“Not quite,” said Cornelys Bat, grimly.
The mob came just after nightfall of the day after the women and children, with the rest of the household goods, had gone on their way to a new home. It was not a very well organized crowd, and was armed with clubs, pikes, and torches mainly. It found to its astonishment that the timbers of a loom, heavy and well seasoned, may make excellent weapons, and that the arm of a weaver is not feeble nor his spirit weak. It was no part of the plan of Cornelys Bat to leave the buildings of Master Gay undefended, and the determined, organized resistance of the Flemings repelled the attack. The next day it was found that the weavers had gone, and their quarters were occupied by some of Master Gay’s men who were storing there a quantity of this year’s fleeces. Meanwhile the Flemings had settled in the little road that ran past the nunnery at King’s Barton and was called Minchen Lane.
THE WISHING CARPET
My rug lies under the candle-light,
Flame-red, sea-blue, leaf-brown, gold-bright,
Born of the shifting ancient sand
Of a far-away desert land.
There in Haroun al Raschid’s day
A carpet enchanted, their wise men say,
Was woven for princes, in realms apart—
And so is this rug of my heart!
Here is a leaf like the heart of a rose,
And here the shift in the pattern shows
How another weft in the tireless loom
Set the gold of the skies a-bloom.