mbrian who was "out" in the '15 was him whom men
then called "Mad Jack Hall" of Otterburn. Not that he was in any sense
mad, or even of weak intellect--far from it; the name merely arose from
the fiery energy of the man, and from the reckless courage with which he
would face any danger or any odds. As a man, he was extremely popular,
and no one could have been more beloved by his dependents. His fine
estate he managed himself, and managed well, though before he went "out"
misfortunes fell on him which no management could have averted. They
were misfortunes so crushing, and following so immediately on each
other's heels, that amongst the simple country folk they were looked on,
and spoken of, with awe, as manifestly judgments from Heaven for some
fancied sin they supposed him to have committed. He might, people said,
have prevented, but did not prevent, a duel which took place in the
streets of Newcastle, in which a very popular young man was killed. It
was "murder," and no fair fight, folk said; and, whatever the rights of
the case, at least the successful duellist was afterwards hanged for the
murder. Hall's failure to interfere seems to have strained his
popularity for a time. In such circumstances people are prone to assume
that an all-wise Providence, necessarily seeing eye to eye with them,
inflicts some special punishment on the person who has sinned some
special sin, or who has, at all events, done (or not done) something
which, in the popular judgment, he should not have done (or done, as the
case may be). Misfortune or accident comes to some one who has roused
popular clamour. "I told you so," cries the public; "a judgment!"

In this instance, the sin of not interfering to prevent a duel--or a
murder, as popular opinion called it--was punished, firstly, by Hall's
house at Otterburn being burned to the ground, together with all his
farm buildings and great part of his farm stock; and, secondly, this
grievous loss was followed in the time of harvest by a devastating flood
in the Rede, which swept away from the rich, low-lying haughs every
particle of the fat crops which already had been cut, and were now
merely waiting to be carried home.

By such drastic means having apparently been purged of his sin, Mr. Hall
seems to have regained his normal popularity, and an incident which
presently occurred raised it to an even greater height than before. As
far back at least as the time of Cromwell it had been customary to