‘Please, my lord,’ said one, ‘we must report your lordship.’
‘Go and report,’ replied the rebel.
It was now half-past five in the afternoon, and the labourers were returning from the fields. The village street was crowded with men, most of them young men.
The men began whispering together, and the women were all delivering orations at once.
The Chief pointed to some of the men and called them by name.
‘You, John Deer; you, Nick Trulliber; you—and you—and you,—come with me. You have old wives too; unless you want to be sent to prison for life for wife-beating, come with me and fight for your liberty.’
They hesitated; they trembled; they looked at the vicar, at their wives: they would have been lost but for the presence of mind of the cobbler.
He was, as I have said, an elderly man, bowed down by his work and by years. But he sprang to the front and shouted to the men:—
‘Come, unless you are cowards and deserve the hulks. Why, it’s slavery, it’s misery; it’s unnatural pains and penalties. Come out of it, you poor, wretched chaps, that ought to be married to them as is young and comely. Come away, all you young fellows that want young wives. Hooray! his lordship’s going to deliver us all. Three cheers for Lord Chester! We’ll fight for our liberty.’
He brandished his bradawl, seized one of the men, and the rest followed. There was a general scream from the women of rage and terror; for all the men followed, like sheep, in a body. Not a single man of the village under sixty years of age or over sixteen slept in his wife’s house that night.