the justices, with the
_posse comitatus_, escorted the usher to the schoolhouse, opened the
door, put him formally in possession, and, wishing him much good of his
new appointment, departed.

But how did Jack, you will ask, bear this rebuff on the part of his own
kin? Why, very ill indeed; in truth, he became furious, and seemed to
have lost all natural feelings towards his own flesh and blood. He
summoned such of his family as had given admission to the usher before
him, called a sort of court-martial of the rest of his relations to
enquire into their conduct; and, notwithstanding the accused protested
that they had the highest respect and regard for Jack, were his humble
servants to command in all ordinary matters, and only acted in this
instance in obedience to the justices' warrant, (the which, if they had
disobeyed, they were certain to have been at that moment cooling their
heels in the stocks,) Jack, who was probably worked up to a kind of
frenzy by his more violent of his inmates, kicked them out of the room,
and sent a set of his myrmidons after them, with instructions to tear
their coats off their backs, strip them of their wigs and small-clothes,
and turn them into the street. Against this the unlucky wights appealed
to the justices for protection, who, to be sure, sent down some
policemen, who beat off the mob, and enabled them to make their doors
fast against Jack and his emissaries. But beyond that they could give
them little assistance; for though Jack and his abettors could not
actually venture upon a trespass by forcing their way within doors, they
contrived to render the very existence of all who were not of their way
of thinking miserable. If it was an usher who, in spite of all their
efforts to exclude him, had fairly got admittance into the schoolhouse,
they set up a sentry-box at his very door, in which a rival usher held
forth on Cocker and the alphabet; they drew off a few stray boys from
the village school, and this detachment, recruited and reinforced by all
the idlers of the neighbourhood, to whom mischief was sport, was
studiously instructed to keep up a perpetual whistling, hooting,
howling, hissing, and imitations of the crowing of a cock, so as to
render it impossible for the usher and boys within the school to hear or
profit by one word that was said. If the scholars within were told to
say A, the blackguards without were bellowing B; or if the usher asked
how many three times three made,