silent town were many whose hearts went with the angry and excited crowd, and who would bless them and caress them for that night’s deeds.  Daniel soon found himself a laggard in planning, compared to some of those around him.  But when, with the rushing sound of many steps and but few words, they had arrived at the blank, dark, shut-up Mariners’ Arms, they paused in surprise at the uninhabited look of the whole house:  it was Daniel once more who took the lead.

’Speak ’em fair,’ said he; ’try good words first.  Hobbs ’ll mebbe let ’em out quiet, if we can catch a word wi’ him.  A say, Hobbs,’ said he, raising his voice, ‘is a’ shut up for t’ neet; for a’d be glad of a glass.  A’m Dannel Robson, thou knows.’

Not one word in reply, any more than from the tomb; but his speech had been heard nevertheless.  The crowd behind him began to jeer and to threaten; there was no longer any keeping down their voices, their rage, their terrible oaths.  If doors and windows had not of late been strengthened with bars of iron in anticipation of some such occasion, they would have been broken in with the onset of the fierce and now yelling crowd who rushed against them with the force of a battering-ram, to recoil in baffled rage from the vain assault.  No sign, no sound from within, in that breathless pause.

‘Come away round here! a’ve found a way to t’ back o’ behint, where belike it’s not so well fenced,’ said Daniel, who had made way for younger and more powerful men to conduct the assault, and had employed his time meanwhile in examining the back premises.  The men rushed after him, almost knocking him down, as he made his way into the lane into which the doors of the outbuildings belonging to the inn opened.  Daniel had already broken the fastening of that which opened into a damp, mouldy-smelling shippen, in one corner of which a poor lean cow shifted herself on her legs, in an uneasy, restless manner, as her sleeping-place was invaded by as many men as could cram themselves into the dark hold.  Daniel, at the end farthest from the door, was almost smothered before he could break down the rotten wooden shutter, that, when opened, displayed the weedy yard of the old inn, the full clear light defining the outline of each blade of grass by the delicate black shadow behind.

This hole, used to give air and light to what had once been a stable, in the days when horse travellers were in the habit of coming to the Mariners’ Arms, was large enough to admit the passage of a man; and Daniel, in virtue of its discovery, was the first to get through.  But he was larger and heavier than he had been; his lameness made him less agile, and the impatient crowd behind him gave him a helping push that sent him down on the round stones with which the yard was paved, and for the time disabled him so much that he could only just crawl out of the way of leaping feet and heavy nailed boots, which came through the opening till the yard was filled with men, who now set up a fierce, derisive shout, which, to their delight, was answered from within.  No more silence, no more dead opposition:  a living struggle, a glowing, raging fight; and Daniel thought he should be obliged to sit there still, leaning against the wall, inactive, while the strife and the action were going on in which he had once been foremost.