“I don’t know the man’s name, your Worship:  but he’s yonder, there, in a striped shirt open at the neck, with a little round hat on the back of his head; and, what’s more, I see’d him do it.”

“Then take down his description, John Sprott, and write that at the words ‘Our sovereign Lord’ he shied a lump of muck.”

John Sprott pulled out a note-book and entered the offence.

“And after ‘muck,’ John Sprott, write ‘God save the King.’  I don’t know that ’tis necessary, but you’ll be on the safe side.”  His Worship unfolded the proclamation again, cleared his throat, and resumed: 

“Our sovereign Lord the King chargeth and commandeth all persons, being assembled, immediately to disperse themselves and peacefully to depart to their habitations or to their lawful business, upon the pains contained in the Act made in the first year of George the First for preventing—­”

A handful of more or less liquid mud here took him on the nape of the neck and splashed over the paper which he held in both hands.

“Arrest that man!” he shouted, bouncing about in a fury.  At the same moment my father gripped my elbow as a volley of missiles darkened the air, and we fell back—­all the Company of the Rose—­shoulder to shoulder, to protect the Methodists, as a small but solid phalanx of men came driving through the crowd with mischief in their faces.

“But wait awhile! wait awhile!” called out Billy Priske, as my father plucked out his sword.  “These be no enemies, master, to us or the Methodists, but honest sea-fardingers—­packet-men all—­and, look you, with roses in their hats!”

“Roses?  Faith, and so they have!” cried my father, lowering his guard.  “But what the devil, then, is the meaning of it?”

He was answered on the moment.  The official whom his Worship called Nandy Daddo had made a rush into the crowd, charging it with his mace as with a battering-ram, and was in the act of clutching the man who had thrown the filth, when the phalanx of packet-men broke through and bore him down.  A moment later I saw his gold-laced hat fly skimming over the heads of the throng, and his mace wrenched from him and held aloft in the hands of a red-faced man, who flourished it twice and rushed upon the Mayor, shouting at the same time with all his lungs:  “Townshends!  This way, Townshends!” whereat the packet-men cheered and pressed after him, driving the crowd of Falmouth to right and left.

Clearly what mischief they meant was intended for the Mayor:  and the Mayor, for a short-sighted man, detected this very promptly.  Also he showed surprising agility in tumbling out of his saddle; which he had scarcely done before the crupper resounded with a whack, of which one of the borough maces bears an eloquent dent to this day.

The Mayor, catching his toe in the stirrup as he slipped off, staggered and fell at our feet.  But the body of his horse, interposed between him and the rioters, protected him for an instant, and in that instant my father and Nat Fiennes dragged him up and thrust him to the rear while we faced the assault.  For now, and without a word said, the Methodists were forgotten, and we of the Rose were standing for law and order against this other company of the Rose, of whose quarrel we knew nothing at all.