quite
apart from general feelings of humanity and patriotism, had still
stronger reason for avoiding tumult and bloodshed. At that very moment
his sick wife lay at the threshold of death. A mere volley, a single
hour of street-fighting, might perhaps be the death of her.

In this agonising situation a horseman was seen approaching from the
opposite side of the road. Only with the utmost difficulty could he
force his way through the densely packed mob. Indeed, they would not
have stirred a stump had he not kept on waving in his hand a piece of
paper, and shouting incessantly that this was a proclamation addressed
to the people, and he wanted to speak with their leader.

"Who is the worthy leader of these patriots?" he exclaimed.

Vertessy recognised in the horseman that mysterious Pole whom the
condemned man could not recollect, and by this time he was a trifle
suspicious of the fellow himself. After all, he began to think, there
might be some coherency in the words of the prisoner, though only an
hour ago he had looked upon them as the mere ravings of a lunatic.

"Where is the leader of the people?" cried Kamienszka, urging on the
sweating horse towards the nearest open space.

Master Matthias proudly pointed to the warm swelling bosom which lay
beneath his leather apron, by way of indicating that he was the man.

With an air of pathetic dignity Kamienszka handed to the worthy patriot
the proclamation of Numa Pompilius, in which that worthy confided to
the tailors, cobblers, and bakers of the city the honourable task of
making, stitching, and baking some thousands of boots, hose, and rolls
for headquarters to be delivered immediately.

"What are you doing?" cried the General in French. "At the very first
movement I shall scatter these men."

"I am pouring oil upon the waters," replied the young horseman in the
same language. "Within an hour every man of them will go home."

Master Matthias seized the document with both hands, pressed his musket
betwixt his knees, and read the proclamation attentively from beginning
to end.

The impression it made upon him could be imagined from the conduct of
his moustache, which gradually lost its martial fierceness, and at last
hung meekly down.

"Six thousand pairs of boots--whew!"

Meantime, a skinny fellow-citizen, buttoned up to the chin, kept on
stretching his scraggy neck a monstrous distance across the heads of
three rows of other burghers standing in front of hi