The company, being one to which a personality never failed to appeal, again roared with laughter, and Watkins saw with dismay that a greater than he had arisen; he made one mighty effort.
“Yes,” he remarked, at the pitch of his penetrating voice, “yes. An a’ might have set fire to the toll-gate with a’s whiskers!”
Hosea turned upon him an awful glare, for his red hair had long been a weapon in the hands of his foes. He had no sprightliness of retort, but he was determined that Johnny’s pleasantries should not continue for want of a solid, knock-down blow.
“If I had a beard like a billy-goat waggin’ about under an ass’s face,” he said solemnly, “I’d keep it out o’ the sight o’ folks, for fear it might be made a mock of—that I would.”
Johnny Watkins gave a gasp which made his beard wag more vehemently than ever, and retired abashed into silence.
Rhys had not come through the fog at that hour of the evening to listen to profitless disputes. The matter in hand, which was a projected attack upon a toll-gate not far from Llangarth, interested him more now that he had become the prominent person in it, for he had arrived at the inn uncertain whether or no he would lend active support to the affair, it being more of a piece of out-of-the-way amusement to him than anything affecting his opinions.
At this time a wave of wrath which had a considerable foundation of justice was surging over South Wales. By a general Highway Act, a new principle of road-government had been brought in, under which the trustees of turnpike roads might raise money through tolls, sufficient to pay the interest of the debts and keep the highways in repair. For this reason the gates were withdrawn from the operation of the Highway Laws, the tolls increased in amount, and every means used by those in authority to uphold the revenues of their trusts. The gates had, in some cases, been taken by professional toll-renters, men who came from a distance, and who were consequently regarded with suspicion by the intensely conservative population of the rural districts. These people, having higher rents to make up, had refused to give credit to farmers, or to allow them to compound for tolls on easy terms as had been formerly their custom.
The effect of all this had been to rouse the public to a state of fury, which had resulted, in many places, in serious riots. In carrying out the provisions of their respective Acts, the trustees were under little or no control; they erected fresh gates, interpreted the laws as they thought fit, and there was no appeal from their decisions. Added to these difficulties, a succession of wet harvests, and the fall in price of live stock had reduced the farmers’ capital, and they and their dependents resented, as well they might, the new devices for raising money out of their emptying pockets.
The first riot had broken out at Carmarthen, and was the signal for a series of like disturbances all over the country. Although it had taken place in May, and now, as Rhys Walters and his companions sat by the Dipping-Pool fire, the year had almost reached its end, the reign of terror created was still going on, though it had not, so far, begun in Breconshire. The Carmarthen rioters had banded themselves together about three hundred strong, under a person whom the law never succeeded in identifying, and who, assuming the name of “Rebecca,” appeared dressed as a woman and mounted upon a black horse. “Rebecca and her children,” as they were called by the terrified neighbourhood, marched upon one of the gates in the town armed with every conceivable kind of weapon, pitchforks, pistols, hay-knives—to say nothing of the crowbars and the mallets which they carried with them and with which they intended to destroy the bar. “Rebecca” had been chosen as a name for their captain in reference to an Old Testament text, which tells how Rebecca, bride of Isaac, on leaving her father’s house, was blessed by Laban in these words: “Let thy seed possess the gate of those that hate them.”
About two o’clock in the morning the strange tribe, some mounted and some on foot, had appeared near the toll and placed sentinels in the surrounding streets; and, before the astonished inhabitants, roused from their beds by the noise and the loud orders of Rebecca, could realize what was happening, the work of destruction was going bravely forward, the rioters using their implements like demons, not only upon the toll-bar, but upon all who tried to hinder them.