“You are welcome,” said honest Wilde.  He then turned to break a piece of coal, and instantly one of those who had accepted his hospitality struck him on the back of the head, and the other five rushed in, and they all set on him, and hit him with cartlegs, and kicked him with their heavy shoes.  Overpowered as he was, he struggled away from them, groaning and bleeding, and got to a shed about thirty yards off.  But these relentless men, after a moment’s hesitation, followed him, and rained blows and kicks on him again, till he gave himself up for dead.  He cried out in his despair, “Lord, have mercy on me; they have finished me!” and fainted away in a pool of his own blood.  But, just before he became insensible, he heard a voice say, “Thou’ll burn no more bricks.”  Then the “victims” retired, leaving this great criminal for dead.

After a long while he came to himself, and found his arm was broken, and his body covered with cuts and bruises.  His house was scarcely a furlong distant, yet he was an hour crawling to it.  His room was up a short stair of ten steps.  The steps beat him; he leaned on the rail at the bottom, and called out piteously, “My wife! my wife! my wife!” three times.

Mrs. Wilde ran down to him, and caught hold of his hand, and said, “Whatever is to do?”

When she took his hand the pain made him groan, and she felt something drip on to her hand.  It was blood from his wounded arm.  Then she was terrified, and, strong with excitement, she managed to get him into the house and lay him on the floor.  She asked him, had he fallen off the kiln?  He tried to reply, but could not, and fainted again.  This time he was insensible for several hours.  In the morning he came to, and told his cruel story to Whitbread, Bolt, and others.  Bolt and Whitbread took it most to heart.  Bolt went to Mr. Ransome, and put the case in his hands.

Ransome made this remark:—­“Ah, you are a stranger, sir.  The folk hereabouts never come to us in these Union cases.  I’ll attend to it, trust me.”

Bolt went with this tragedy to Henry, and it worried him; but he could do nothing.  “Mr. Bolt,” said he, “I think you are making your own difficulties.  Why quarrel with the Brickmakers’ Union?  Surely that is superfluous.”

“Why, it is them that quarreled with me; and I’m Ben Bolt, that is bad to beat.”  He armed himself with gun and revolver, and watched the Whitbreads’ yard himself at night.

Two days after this, young Whitbread’s wife received an anonymous letter, advising her, as a friend, to avert the impending fate of her husband, by persuading him to dismiss the police and take back his Hands.  The letter concluded with this sentence, “He is generally respected; but we have come to a determination to shoot him.”

Young Whitbread took no apparent notice of this, and soon afterward the secretary of the Union proposed a conference.  Bolt got wind of this, and was there when the orators came.  The deputation arrived, and, after a very short preamble, offered to take the six-pence.