Volume Three—Chapter Eighteen.
Scarthe stood for a time astounded—stupefied. Had Marion Wade gone mad? Her singular behaviour seemed to say so.
But no. There appeared to be method in the movement she had made. As she glided through the open casement, he had observed, that her eye was fixed upon something outside—something that must have influenced her to the making of that unexpected exit.
On recovering from his surprise, the cuirassier captain hastened towards the window; but, before reaching it, he heard sounds without, conducting him to alarming conjectures. They might have been unintelligible, but for the sight that came under his eyes as he looked forth.
A crowd was coming up the main avenue of the park—a crowd of men. They were not marching in order, and might have been called a “mob;” although it consisted of right merry fellows—neither disorderly nor dangerous. The individuals who composed it appeared to be of every condition in life, and equally varied as to their costumes. But the greater number of them could be identified as men of the farmer and mechanic class—the “bone and sinew” of the country.
The miller under his hoary hat; the butcher in his blood-stained boots; the blacksmith in grimy sheepskin; the small shopkeeper, and pale-faced artisan; the grazier and agriculturist of ruddy hue—alongside the tavern-keeper and tapster of equally florid complexion—could be distinguished in that crowd coming on towards the walls of Bulstrode mansion.
The cuirassier captain had seen such an assemblage before. It might have been the same, that saluted him with jeers—as he crossed the Colne bridge, returning from his unsuccessful pursuit of the black horseman. With slight exceptions, it was the same.
One of these exceptions was an individual, who, mounted on horseback, was riding conspicuously in front; and who appeared to occupy a large share of the attention of those who followed him. He was a man of mature age, dressed in dark velvet tunic, and with trunk-hose of a corresponding colour. A man with an aspect to inspire regard—even from a crowd to which he might have been a stranger.