cessity of any petition at all," he
repeated. "I'm told you have addressed a petition to my lord." He
paused for a reply from the men, and after a while, Handy plucked up
courage and said, "Yes, we has."

"You have addressed a petition to my lord, in which, as I am informed,
you express an opinion that you do not receive from Hiram's estate all
that is your due." Here most of the men expressed their assent. "Now
what is it you ask for? What is it you want that you hav'n't got
here? What is it--"

"A hundred a year," muttered old Moody, with a voice as if it came out
of the ground.

"A hundred a year!" ejaculated the archdeacon militant, defying the
impudence of these claimants with one hand stretched out and closed,
while with the other he tightly grasped, and secured within his
breeches pocket, that symbol of the church's wealth which his own
loose half-crowns not unaptly represented. "A hundred a year!
Why, my men, you must be mad; and you talk about John Hiram's will!
When John Hiram built a hospital for worn-out old men, worn-out old
labouring men, infirm old men past their work, cripples, blind,
bed-ridden, and such like, do you think he meant to make gentlemen of
them? Do you think John Hiram intended to give a hundred a year to
old single men, who earned perhaps two shillings or half-a-crown a day
for themselves and families in the best of their time? No, my men,
I'll tell you what John Hiram meant: he meant that twelve poor old
worn-out labourers, men who could no longer support themselves, who
had no friends to support them, who must starve and perish miserably
if not protected by the hand of charity;--he meant that twelve such
men as these should come in here in their poverty and wretchedness,
and find within these walls shelter and food before their death, and a
little leisure to make their peace with God. That was what John Hiram
meant: you have not read John Hiram's will, and I doubt whether those
wicked men who are advising you have done so. I have; I know what his
will was; and I tell you that that was his will, and that that was his
intention."

Not a sound came from the eleven bedesmen, as they sat listening to
what, according to the archdeacon, was their intended estate. They
grimly stared upon his burly figure, but did not then express, by word
or sign, the anger and disgust to which such language was sure to give
rise.

"Now let me ask you," he continued: "do you think you are wors