As Mark had assured Kerenhappuch, Ephraim Beamish had pushed his way after the rabble, undeterred by the treatment he had received at its hands, his enthusiasm unquenched by his plunge in the icy water. As there was no organisation in the mob, he was suffered to rejoin it with an occasional protest only, but Chevell, Harley, and Tansley would not allow him to remount the waggon.
No sooner did Beamish find that a great body of the insurgents were setting themselves to eat, drink, and revel about the great fire in front of the cathedral, than he got a chair, and endeavoured to harangue them, to point out to them that they were throwing away their occasion, neglecting to enforce their grievances on the employers of labour, and that they were making enemies among all the well-disposed by their capricious and lawless proceedings. But directly his face was discerned by the flicker of the fire, and his voice recognised, beaten back by the cathedral walls, than shouts were raised of, 'That's the fellow who stole the Cheap Jack girl's money. We want no preaching here.'
His chair was tripped up, and he was sent sprawling in the dirt.
He rose angry and disconcerted. The movement of which he was the instigator, and of which he had been appointed director by vote of the men, had rejected his direction, and was taking its own suicidal course.
The fens immediately surrounding the isle on which Ely stood were farmed by men whose homesteads were on the gault excrescence that formed the isle. According to the preconcerted scheme, the Union of Fen Labourers was to proceed to these farmsteads one by one, to exact of the farmers a contribution to the cause, and an oath to raise the wage.
It was true enough that two or three farms had been visited which lay to right and left of the road from Littleport to Ely, but no sooner had the men reached the Fen capital, than they forgot their purpose, directed their attention to the provision-shops, waylaid and blackmailed passengers, broke into the taverns, and thought only of eating, drinking, and making money. They entirely neglected the scheme that had been agreed to. Not a single farm in the isle was molested, not a single farmer coerced.
CHAPTER XXVII
SIR BATES DUDLEY'S RIDE