o, having previously gained admission by the
window, had forcibly barricaded the door against the constables, being
assisted in the defence thereof by the mob without, who formed a double
line, and kept hustling the poor usher and the constables from side to
side, helping themselves to a purse or two in passing, and calling out
at the same time, "take care of pickpockets"--occasionally amusing
themselves also by playfully smashing the beaver of some of the justices
of the peace over their face, to the tune of "all round my hat," sung in
chorus, on the Mainzerian system, amidst peals of laughter.

Meantime Jack was skipping up and down upon the tombstone, calling out
to his myrmidons--"Good friends! Sweet friends! Let me not stir your
spirits up to mutiny. Though that cairn of granite stones lies very
handy and inviting, I pray you refrain from it. Touch it not. I humbly
entreat my friend with the dirty shirt not to break the sconce of the
respectable gentleman whom I have in my eye, with that shillelah of
his--though I must admit that he is labouring under strong and just
provocation." "For mercy's sake, my dear sir!" he would exclaim to a
third--"don't push my respected friend the justice into yonder
puddle--the one which lies so convenient on your right hand there;
though, to be sure, the ground _is_ slippery, and the thing _might_
happen, in a manner without any one's being able to prevent it." And so
on he went, taking care to say nothing for which the justices could
afterwards venture to commit him to Bridewell; but, in truth, stirring
up the rabble to the utmost, by nods, looks, winks, and covert speeches,
intended to convey exactly the opposite meaning from what the words
bore.

At last by main force, and after a hard scuffle, the constables
contrived to force the schoolhouse door open, and so to make way for the
justices, the usher, and those of Jack's family who, as we have seen
already, had made up their minds to give the usher possession, to enter.
But having entered, the confusion and bedevilment was ten times worse
than even in the churchyard itself. The benches were lined with a pack
of overgrown rascals in corduroy vestments, and with leather at the
knees, from all the neighbouring villages; in a gallery at one end sat a
Scotch bagpiper, flanked by a blind fiddler, and an itinerant performer
on the hurdygurdy, accompanied by his monkey--who in the course of his
circuit through the village, had that morni