ace 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, d