"I don't know. Run and see, Joan: everybody's flocking that way."
Joan ran down the street, and took her place among a mob of people watching with eager interest the movements of a soldier who, with much unnecessary parade and delay, was taking down the bill of reward posted outside the Three Pilchards. A visible anticipation of the effect about to be produced stirred the small red-coated company, and they wheeled round so as to take note of any sudden emotion produced by the surprise they felt sure awaited the assembly.
"Whatever is it, eh?" asked Joan, trying to catch a better sight of what was going on.
"They'm stickin' up a noo reward, 't seems," said an old man close by. "'Tain't no—"
But the swaying back of the crowd carried Joan with it. A surge forward, and then on her ear fell a shrill cry, and as the name of Jerrem Christmas started from each mouth a hundred eyes seemed turned upon her. For a moment the girl stood dazed, staring around like some wild animal at bay: then, flinging out her arms, she forced those near her aside, and rushing forward to the front made a desperate clutch at the soldier. "Speak! tell me! what's writ there?" she cried.
"Writ there?" said the man, startled by the scared face that was turned up to him. "Why, the warrant to seize for murder Jerrem Christmas, living or dead, on the king's evidence of Adam Pascal."
And the air was rent by a cry of unutterable woe, caught up by each voice around, and coming back in echoes from far and near long after Joan lay a senseless heap on the stones upon which she had fallen.
The Author of "Dorothy Fox."