The twenty-second of November, the day before the total abstinence meeting, arrived in a storm of wind and rain. Everything was favourable to the conspirators. They had met several times to arrange their plans, but had always talked them over in the open air and in the dark, under a hedge, or at the end of a lane. Martha never alluded to the subject with her husband. He had once said to her himself—
“Mind what you’ve promised.”
She replied,—
“Never fear. I said I wouldn’t tell, and I haven’t told. I haven’t breathed a word to any one as wasn’t in the house the night when you talked it over.”
Her husband was satisfied.
Betty was gone to her aunt’s, and it was positively ascertained that she was not to return that night. Johnson had clearly no intention of spending the night away from home, for, as he was leaving the pit-bank, when Will Jones stepped up to him and said,—
“Well, Thomas, I suppose you’ll have a rare tale to tell about your old mates to-morrow; we must come all on us and hearken you.”
He had quietly replied,—
“I hope, Will, you’ll hear nothing as’ll do any of you any harm, and I hope you wish me none, as I’m sure I don’t wish any harm to you. I mustn’t tarry now, for our Betty’s off; and I’ve much to do at home, for to-morrow’ll be a busy day for me.”
A little later on, towards nine o’clock, one of the men in the plot passed by Johnson’s house, and heard his voice in conversation with some one else. All, therefore, was in a right train for their scheme to succeed. At ten o’clock the whole party met in a lane near Will Jones’s.