A low distant murmur sounded and increased. Northrop and Haigh were coming home at last. All at once the sun glinted on the steel head of a pike, and on another and another. Above the heads of the crowd a chief constable on horseback could be seen, and behind him the driver of a cart. The nodding heads of the horses were hung with black crape. Cope did not accompany his cruel procession. The two coiners were lapped in straw in the cart, tarred for the chains, and their gibbet-timbers rode with them. Every hat, of native or sightseer, was off, and the vendors of pamphlets and liquor and sugar-candy and rope at sixpence an inch were silent. The convoy turned into the market-place, and then all stopped. The chief constable on the horse held a proclamation in his hand, and suddenly his voice sounded over the square. The proclamation set forth the crimes for which these had died, and admonished all men to take heed; and when he had read it, he passed it to another constable, who ascended the Piece Hall steps and affixed it to the pillar that still bore the placard that only a few months before had filled Matthew Moon with apprehension. The constable gave orders for a fresh start to be made, towards a spot half way up Wadsworth Shelf, and the driver of the cart shook up his crape-draped horses.
They fell in behind the cart. All at once a stormy muttering rose and a low confused roar. About the cobbled space where they unloaded the pack-horses there was a sudden movement of men, not after the cart, but towards the “Fullers’ Arms.” Mish Murgatroyd’s tall figure headed it. James Eastwood saw whither they were bound, and he began to run by back ways and short cuts up the Fullergate to Monjoy’s house.
CHAPTER XI.
A HUNDRED POUNDS.
HE burst into the room where Monjoy sat gazing spiritlessly at his empty hearth.
“Be quick, without ye want Ellah done for,” he said.
“What’s that?” Monjoy asked, turning a haggard face.
“Rouse ye; they’re for Ellah now, Mish and a dozen rough ’uns.”
“Where?” said Monjoy, rising.
“I’ th’ ‘Fullers.’ Haste ye.”
He threw him his cap and began to bundle him about, and Monjoy roused a little from his profound depression. In the Fullergate they broke into a run, and in three minutes they were at the inn. Half-way up the back stairs they found the landlord huddled against the handrail, white-faced, fear-ridden, and listening. They sprang past him, and reached the door of the loom-loft; a low hum of voices sounded inside it. It was locked, and Monjoy struck the heavy door with his fist. “Open!” he cried; and the sound of voices ceased.