There seemed reason in this—and Black Jack's imagination instantly picturing the facility which such a thing would afford for the appropriation of the good citizen's treasures, seizing the idea, said quickly—
"By the green wax! our friend counsels well."
"He does counsel well," rejoined one at the bottom of the table. "Would it not be a fine opportunity to pay ourselves for all they have taken from us?" he added, in a lower key, and looking cunningly round upon his companions as he put the interrogatory.
"What!" said Turner, sternly, "would you make us robbers!"
"Robbers! Master Tyler, no—no—it is one thing to rob, and another to repay yourself, if the chance comes in your way, if you have been cheated."
"I do not understand your one thing or your other thing;" answered Turner—"but I know this, that we have paid the tax, and that we will pay it no more—but as for touching what belongs to the London folks—I'll tell you what, if we do set fire to London, by St. Nicholas! if I see my own son Tom taking a penny's worth, I will fling him into the flames!"
"You are right," said Holgrave, "we want to be free men, not plunderers."
The man did not reply, and Black Jack, congratulating himself that he had prudently kept his own counsel, endeavoured to turn the attention of the leaders from the consequences to the cause. Holgrave positively refused to sanction the contemplated firing: "No man," said he, "has a right to burn what does not belong to him." But he was only one man, and the sense of abstract justice was not sufficiently strong in those about him, to overbalance the advantages that might result from the deed. Certainly, to speak the truth, Turner hesitated some time before he assented, but the pithy language of Thomas Sack, and the covert insinuations of the lettered Oakley, overpowered his better judgment, and the thing was decided upon.
"Hallo—confederates! you have forgotten one thing, which, after all, may do us more good than all the conditions put together. What think ye of burning all the deeds and court-rolls of manors we can lay our hands on? The knaves will find it no easy matter to prove their title to the land, or to the rent or to the bondman either."
Twenty brawny hands grasped successively that of the spokesman, and an applauding murmur ran through the meeting.