“In bursts of outrage spread your judgment wide,

    And to your wrath cry out, ‘Be thou our guide.’”

    Wordsworth.

Sophy was endeavouring to make the children remember who Joseph was, and thinking them unusually stupid, idle, and talkative, when, without ceremony, the door was banged open, and in tramped Hoglah Todd, with the baby in her arms, her sun-bonnet on her neck, and her black hair sticking wildly out. “Please, ma’am,” she began, “Jack Swing is up a-breaking the machine, and mother says you are to go to Farmer Pearson’s to be safe out of the way!”

“Hoggie Todd,” began Mrs Thorpe, “that’s not the way to come into school,” but she could not finish, for voices broke out above the regulation school hush: “Yes, yes, father said,” and “Our Jem said,” and it ended in “Jack Swing’s a-coming to break up the machine.” Only one or two said, “Mother said as how it was a shame, and they’d get into trouble.”

“Your mother sent you?” said Sophy to Hoglah.

“Yes, ma’am. She’s gone up herself to tell madam, and take she to Pearson’s, and her said you’d better go there, back ways, or else stay here with governess till ’twas quieted down.”

“Hark! They are holloaing.”

Strange sounds were in fact to be heard, and the children, losing all sense of discipline, made a rush to snatch hats and bonnets, and poured out in a throng, tumbling over one another, Hoglah among the foremost. Mrs Thorpe, much terrified, began to clasp her hands and say, “Oh dear! oh dear, the wicked, ungrateful men, that they should do such things. Oh! Miss Sophy, you will stay here, won’t you?”

“No, I must go and see after my sister and the children,” said Sophy, already at the door.

“But they’ll be at Mr Pearson’s. The girl said so. Oh, stay, ma’am! Don’t venture. Pray, pray—”

But Sophy had the door open, and with “I can’t. Thank you, no, I can’t.”

There were the confused sounds of howling and singing on the top of the hill. Betsy Seddon, at her cottage door, called out, “Don’t go up there, miss; it’s no place for the likes of you!” but Sophy only answered, “My sister,” and dashed on.

She could get into a field of Edmund’s by scrambling over a difficult gate, and, impelled by the sight of some rough-looking men slouching along, she got over it—she hardly knew how—and, after crossing it, came upon all the cows, pigs, and horses, with Pucklechurch presiding over them. He, too, said, “Doan’t ye go up there, Miss Sophy. Them mischievous chaps will be after them pigs, fools as they be, so I brought the poor dumb things out of the way of them, and you’d better be shut of it too, miss.”

“But, my sister, Master Pucklechurch! I must see to her.”

“She’ll be safe enow, miss. They don’t lift a hand to folks, as I’ve heard, but I’ll do my duty by the beastises.”

He certainly seemed more bent on his duty to the “beastises” than that to his wife or his master’s wife; and yet, when Sophy proved deaf to all his persuasions, he muttered, “Wilful must to water, and Wilful must drink. But, ah! yon beastises be safe enow, poor dumb things, so I’ll e’en go after the maid, to see as her runs into no harm. She be a fine, spirity maid whatsome’er.”

So on he plodded, in the rear of Sophy, who, with eager foot, had crossed the sloping home-field, and gained the straw yard, all deserted now except by the fowls. The red game cock was scratching and crowing there, as if the rabble rout were not plainly to be seen straggling along the drive.

Still there was time for Sophy to fly to the house, where, at the door, she met Mrs Pucklechurch.

“Bless my soul and honour, Miss Sophy. You here! The mistress, she’s gone with the children to Mr Pearson’s, and you’ll be in time to catch her up if you look sharp enough.”

“I shall not run away. Some one ought to try to protect my brother’s property.”

“Now, don’t ’ee, don’t ’ee, Miss Sophy. You’ll do no good with that lot, and only get hurt yourself.”

But Sophy was not to be persuaded. She went manfully out to the gate, and shut it in the face of the disguised men, who came swaggering up towards it.

“What’s your business here?” she demanded, in her young, clear voice.

“Come, young woman,” said a man in a false nose and a green smock-frock, but whose voice had a town sound in it, and whose legs and feet were those of no rustic, “clear out of the way, or it will be the worse for you!”

“What have you to do here on my brother’s ground?” again asked Sophy, standing there in her straw bonnet and pink cotton frock.

“We don’t want to do nothing, miss,”—and that voice she knew for Dan Hewlett’s—“but to have down that new-fangled machine as takes away the work from the poor.”

“What work of yours did it ever take away, Dan Hewlett?” said she. “Look here! it makes bread cheaper—”

She had thought before of the chain of arguments, but they would not come in the face of the emergency; and besides, she felt that her voice would not carry her words beyond the three or four men who were close to the gate. She might as well have spoken to the raging sea when, as the gate was shaken, she went on with a fresh start, “I call it most cowardly and ungrateful—”

At that moment she was seized from behind by two great brawny arms, and borne backward, struggling helplessly like a lamb in a bear’s embrace. She saw that, not only was the gate burst in, but that the throng were pressing in from the garden side, and she was not released until she was set down in Mrs Pucklechurch’s kitchen, and a gruff voice said, rather as if to a little child, “Bide where you be, and no one will go for to hurt you.”

It was a huge figure, with a woman’s bonnet stuck upright over his chalked face, and a red cloak covering his smock-frock, and he was gone the next moment, while Mrs Pucklechurch, screaming and sobbing, clutched at Sophy, and held her tight, with, “Now, don’t, Miss Sophy, don’t ye! Bide still, I say!”

“But, Edmund’s machine! His things and all!” gasped Sophy, still struggling.

“Bless you, miss, you can’t do nothing with the likes of them, the born rascals; you would, may be, get a stone yourself and what would the master say to that?”

“Oh! what are they doing now?” as a wild hurrah arose, and all sorts of confused noises. Mrs Pucklechurch had locked the door on her prisoner, but she was equally curious, and anxious for her old man; so, with one accord, they hurried up the stairs together, and looked out at an upper window, whence they could only see a wild crowd of hats, smock-frocks, and women’s clothes gathering about a heap where the poor machine used to stand, and whence a cloud of smoke began to rise, followed by a jet of flame, fed no doubt by the quantity of straw and chaff lying about. Sophy and Betty both shrieked and exclaimed, but Betty’s mind was chiefly full of her old man, and she saw his straw hat at last. He was standing in front of the verandah, before the front door, and, as they threw the window open, they heard his gruff voice—

“Not I. Be off with you! I baint a-going to give my master’s property to a lot of rapscallion thieves and robbers like you, as should know better.”

Then came the answer, “We don’t want none of his property. Only his guns and his money for the cause of the people.” And big sticks were brandished, and the throng thickened.

“Oh, don’t ye hurt he!” screamed Betty. “He that never did you no harm! Don’t ye! Oh, Dan Hewlett! Oh-oh!”

“Then throw ............