“He’s gone t’ see what o’ th’ mob an’ feightin’s abeawt. Aw wish he wur whoam.”
Matt wished the same, but went in at the unfastened door, and passed on to the room beyond, where he found the untended lobscouse boiling over into the fire. He took the lid off the pot; then went to the stair-foot, and called “Martha!”
There being no answer, he strode back through the shop, saying as he went—
“Dang it, hoo’ll not be content till hoo’s hurt!”
He stepped out on the rough pavement, and, looking up, called out—
“Do put yo’r yeads in; yo’ll——”
A musket-shot, splintering a corner of the stone window-sill on which they leaned, was more effective than his adjuration. The cannon boomed simultaneously—a shriek recalled the hastily-withdrawn heads; and there, on the rough sun-baked ground before their eyes, lay weltering in blood, a doubled-up form, which a minute before had been their father, Matt Cooper, the tanner, the preserver of Jabez, the friend of Simon and Bess.
This harrowing event was the last of the painful incidents of that fatal day coming within the scope of this history, which isolated as they are, the writer knows to be true, even though they may not be chronicled elsewhere.
The streets grew silent and deserted, save by the military and medical men, as the day and the night advanced: but within the houses of poor and rich there were loud complaints and groans, and murmurings, which did not sink to silence with the day that called them forth.