you was welcome to the boast of havin'
fired first shot, but now every man aboard fired it; and let he who says
he didn't stand out and say it now."

"Fair spoke and good sense," said the men.

"Then off with you, each to the place he thinks safest.--Jerrem and you,
father, must stay here. I shall go to the mill, and, Jonathan, for the
night you'd best come along with me."

With little visible excitement and but few words the men began to
depart, all of them more or less stupefied by the influence of drink,
which, combined with this unexpected dash to their hopes and overthrow
of their boastings, seemed to rob them of all their energy. They were
ready to do whatever they were asked, go wherever they were told, listen
to all that was said, but anything beyond this was then impossible. They
had no more power of deciding, proposing, arranging for themselves, than
if they had been a flock of sheep warned that a ravenous wolf was near.

The one necessary action which seemed to have laid hold upon them was
that they must all solemnly shake hands; and this in many cases they
did over and over again, repeating each time, with a warning nod of the
head, "Well, mate, 'tis a bad job o' it, this," until some of the more
collected felt it necessary to interfere and urge their immediate
departure: then one by one they stole away, leaving the house in
possession of its usual occupants.

Adam had already been up stairs to get Uncle Zebedee--now utterly
incapable of any thought for himself--safely placed in a secret closet
which was hollowed in the wall behind the bed. Turning to Jerrem as he
came down, he said, "You can manage to stow yourself away; only mind, do
it at once, so that the house is got quiet before they've time to get
here."

"All right," said Jerrem doggedly, while Joan slid back the seat of the
settle, turned down a flap in the wall, and discovered the hole in which
Jerrem was to lie concealed. "There! there ain't another hidin'-place
like that in all Polperro," she said. "They may send a whole reg'ment o'
sodgers afore a man among 'em 'ull pitch on 'ee there, Jerrem."

"And that's the reason why I don't want to have it," said Jerrem. "I
don't see why I'm to have the pick and choice, and why Adam's to go off
to where they've only got to search and find."

"Well, but 'tis as he says," urged Joan. "They may ha' got you in their
eye already. Come, 'tis all settled now," she continued persuasively;
"so get 'longs i