"That was all we agreed upon to ask for," replied Black Jack, looking round upon his associates.
"What!" said the overbearing Leicester, looking fiercely at the ex-foreman—"didn't I tell you that I was to be the King of Norfolk, and Wat Tyler——"
"Tush, man!—nonsense!" interrupted Turner, reddening with mingled shame and anger. "Let the bondman be freed, and the land properly parcelled out, and then we can talk about what kings there are to be besides Richard. But I'll tell you, Master Jack Straw, or whatever your name is, that if I cannot read and write like you, I will have a word in the matter as well as yourself—I will have all the lawyers hanged, for one thing: there is so much trickery in the law, that we shall never be sure of whatever is granted, while the men of law can have a crook in it."
"And since we talk of hanging," said Turner, "there is one—" and he looked significantly at Holgrave—"but, never mind; his time will come, Stephen!"
"It will!" answered Holgrave, emphatically; and, as he acquiesced in Turner's implied threat, a smile might be detected on Oakley's lips.
"Friends," said Allan Theoder, speaking for the first time, "I do not hear you say any thing about this tax."
"If we had no king," said Kirkby, "we should have no tax grinding down the poor. If that tax had not made a beggar of me, Jack Kirkby would not have been here amongst you this night."
"But what is it," asked Black Jack, "that I shall add to the parchment?"
"That we shall have no taxes!" said the taciturn Theoder.
"And no king!" added Kirkby.