60

BRED IN THE BONE.

BY ALEXANDER ANDREWS.

CHAPTER X.

CHORUS AGAIN!

AND now we make our unwelcome appearance on the stage again to interrupt the course of Frank Cuttleby's narrative, because it is necessary that we should enlighten the reader on events that occurred behind our hero's back. While he was groping in the darkness of London for those who were eluding his grasp, chaos was coming back again at home; his walls were being razed, his roof-tree torn down, his property scattered to the four winds of heaven!

England was at perhaps the most trying crisis it ever passed through, and after all rode triumphantly over; at that period the constitution of these realms was literally on its trial. Heads or tails-order or anarchy ? Tossed and strained on the angry billows of popular commotion, the good old ship groaned and creaked, and pitched and rolled, and sprang a leak now and again; but good men and true were at the pumps, and kept her afloat through that terrible storm, and with a patch here and a patch there she has calmly floated on the tranquil waters of Victoria's genial reign. But she was nearly lost while the "Sailor King" paced the quarter-deck with a mutinous crew, and the tempest boiling round him, with nothing but an old gingham umbrella to save his poor weak head from the storm.

It was not at Sheffield alone that the angry black clouds had surged up and obscured the political horizon; the whole face of the country was covered with darkness, now and then only lighted up for a time by the torch of the incendiary or the flash of the soldier's musket-the lightning that darted out ever and anon from that terrible cloud, and threatened to fire the great magazine of a nation's passions and stored-up wrongs. Mobs with black flags and red flags, and flags with deaths'-heads on them, and flags bearing the ominous words, "Liberty or Death!" were parading the country, shouting for "Reform or Revolution!" The " Sailor King" trembled on his throne, and the throne itself rocked under him, as he turned piteously for advice from Peel to Wellington, and from Wellington to Peel. The old warrior whispered, "Arm!" the wily statesman whispered, "Yield!" The Iron Duke held out the fusee to the wavering monarch, saying, "Fire!" the malleable commoner, the pen, imploring him to sign. The King contemplated throwing himself into the arms of Grey and Russell, and trusting to the people. But the grim old Duke, who had known something of " the people" before, still counselled resistance, and opened out the standard of the constitution; he would rather trust the army.

Meanwhile the angry tramp of multitudes was heard up in the north; glaring torches lighted up fierce faces by thousands assembled on black moors at midnight-reports came of the yeomanry cavalry cutting and slashing through the streets of towns-of lancers charging and turning mobs to flight-of soldiers unhorsed by brickbats-of missiles thrown down on the troops from roofs of houses. It only wanted the barricades to be a Paris revolution, a fait accompli, the king in flight, and a provisional government ruling the affairs of the nation. But we go to work more slowly in these matters than our lively neighbours, though perhaps more earnestly and to the purpose when we mean it. We talk a good deal before we rise, but when we rise we fight. The nation was rising and buckling on its arms-there was no doubt of that-and one of the earliest towns to prepare for civil war was Sheffield. The gunmakers' and sword-cutlers' shops were ransacked, and weapons were abroad there more dangerous than the clubs and pikes of other towns.

There had been riots in Sheffield before this time, and the people were handy in their work. In 1796, Colonel Athorpe had cleared the streets with musket and carbine; and, only five years since, the people of Sheffield had been reminded of it in some after-dinner speeches at the "Tontine," when they had given a farewell banquet to James Montgomery, their journalist, who had been imprisoned in York Castle thirty years before for his burning execrations of the colonel's conduct.

So they went to work with a will-sharpened their pikes and looked to their powder. They were, of course, not without leaders; some potvaliant, some really eloquent, all exciting in their speech, but none of whom led the van in the tumults that ensued. The meetings were not held at the "Tontine" nor at the "Dog and Duck," but on the open moors or in private houses; but, on moors or in house, there was one man who never missed attendance-a short man, dressed in a shabby shootingjacket, tight trousers, and a blue cravat, tapping his heel with a worn hunting-whip, and with the end of a straw in his mouth-a man of rakish and sporting appearance-a man with grizzled black hair, sharp black eyes, and an aquiline nose. He had cut his old acquaintances, and was no longer the "Nobby" of the "Dog and Duck," for he scented pillage of a nobler order than burglary down the wind. He was not the man whom Frank Cuttleby had met at Liverpool, but, none the less, he was Aunt Margaret's husband and Nelly's father!

There was a riotous meeting on that very moor which, in Frank Cuttleby's youthful imagination, had been the scene of revels scarcely more unholy or more fiendish. A savage, black-muzzled, brawny mob was listening to the fierce exhortations of one of those demagogues who spring up like fungi among our roots at the first breath of discontent. A hard winter, a bad harvest, a scarcity of work, a lock-out, or a strike, are the texts on which they expound, and over which they lash themselves and their auditors into a fury as readily as a political grievance or a government wrong-doing. In times of repose, we believe they become street preachers, scientific lecturers, or public park blasphemers. On the present occasion the orator was for going all lengths for tearing up the stones and pulling down the houses for cutting the banks of the reservoir and breaking down the locks of the canal-for pouring vitriol on the troops if they came that way-for setting fire to the Town Hall. There was no knowing, from his words, what he would stop short of. But these were not the men who were afterwards found sternly facing the soldiers with arms in their hands; it was not of this crew that York and Lancaster Castles were soon afterwards peopled. These noisy poltroons skulked off when the click of the trigger was heard; they only pointed to the way, and let their dupes march on.

So this voluble fellow compared the poor, ignorant, grimy mob who surrounded him on that moor to the proud barons who assembled on Runnymede to demand their liberties of King John, and to wring a Reform Bill from their ruler-expounded to them of Magna Charta and the Bill of Rights-scattered broadcast Tyranny," "Oppression," "Despotism," "Political Slavery," and the other stock phrases, with so unsparing a tongue, and talked so glibly of Freedom, Liberty, Brotherhood, the Rights of Man, the Rights of Conscience, the Rights of Labour, Equality, Division of Property, and dared to bring the name of Omnipotence to his wicked cause so often, that many a dusky collier among his audience whispered behind his hand to his neighbour :

"'Un be a clever cove-bean't 'un ?י

"Ay," replied his companion, "'un's got the gift o' the gab, anyhow! I wonder whether 'un 'ould foight!"

"Even here!" cried the orator, raising his voice and pointing over the heads of the mob" even here, on God's free moors, under the blue canopy of offended heaven, grinding tyranny has built itself a temple out of the marrow of the poor! Yonder is the palace whose walls are built of your bones, and cemented with your blood! There the rich despot has robbed you of the land that God gave you, and enclosed it for his own selfish use! Behind you is a monument of your shame and abasementCuttleby's great house! It is a standing reproach to you, and so long as it stands every Englishman's brow should be mantled with a blush of shame!"

("Werry powerful that!" says the collier, aside to his neighbour. "Werry grand, indeed, Tony!" replies the other, in a whisper. a'most like the Bible, bean't it?")

"It's

"The war-cry of the French people," continues the orator, "when it arose in its majesty to redress its wrongs and to sweep away its oppressors from off the face of God's earth, was 'Let us storm the Bastille!' Mind, they did not say 'Let us attack the Bastille, but their invincible will cried out 'Let us STORM the Bastille!' The Bastille was stronger than yonder heap of brick and stone, but before the morning the Bastille was level with the ground." (The orator almost leaped out of his skin in delivering the last words, and the crowd rent the air with their applause.) "Such is the power of a people's will such is the force of a people's strength. More irresistible than the fiats of gingerbread kings or the cannon of butchering soldiers" The rest was drowned in shrieks of approval. "Yonder tyrant is gone to his last account, if there be any such thing, as the parsons would have us believe"

("Hallo!" murmured the collier; "I say."

" I don't quite make that out," replies his companion, doubtfully.) "-But there stands his stronghold frowning on you still the tyrant who forged fetters upon his workmen's industry, who boxed up the air they breathed”

"Ay, that he did!" cried a rough-looking man who had been discharged from Cuttleby's works for stealing razors, but never prosecuted. "You're right there!"

"-I know it!" cried the apostle of freedom; "and here you, ten thou

sand strong men, many of you with arms in your hands as I can see, stand tamely by and hear it !"

A murmur ran through the mob-a murmur of fell import.

"What does he want us to do?" asks our friend the collier, in the ear of his mate.

"Can't see clearly yet," is the reply of oppressed labour.

"What hope is there for men who will submit to such tyranny as this? What hope for a country with such degenerate sons?"

"What does "dijinirit' mean?" asks trampled industry, robbed of a voice in the ruling of the country.

"Doan't know," answers another of the oppressed people. "S'pose it means chance-children." "Ah!"

"Well may our dastardly rulers pluck up courage to oppress you, when they see what soft stuff you are made of men of steel, indeed!men of pewter and baser metal still!"

"Are we, though?" from several voices. "Show us the way, and you shall see!"

"I hope I am mistaken in you-I begin to think I am," continued the wily speaker. "Yet there stands Cuttleby's lordly mansion-and here stand you!"

"That's an orkard fact," suggests a Derbyshire miner to another of the unrepresented opinions, "but it seems to reflect more on the people o' these parts."

"It's a clincher for them-bean't it?" answers the Staffordshire potter by his side.

"Stop a bit!" cried a wiry voice from the crowd. And a man in a shooting-jacket and tight trousers, mounted upon the shoulders of two stalwart workmen, and taking a straw from his mouth, essayed to address the multitude. "Stop a bit ! Don't go meddling with quiet and unoffending women and children! Don't go pulling down private houses! Old Mr. Cuttleby was a good and charitable man!"

"Ay, ay; that he weer!" cried the mob, with that easy versatility of opinion which is a mob's own.

"Then don't pull down the house-don't disturb his old home! Never was hungry man sent away from that door empty, I have heard" "Never! never!" from a hundred voices.

"-But if it be true, as I have also heard, that young Cuttleby has

parted with the business, and given it up to the Owens" A deep and low groan from the mob.

"The Owens of Stapleton, who have no right to be working menwho were always stiff-necked domineering aristocrats-who betted at Epsom and Newmarket," he added, with a strong remembrance of some fancied grievance, "and never paid their losses the proud poor Owens, then do what you like with the works in the town"

"Let us pull down Cuttleby's works!" cried some one, eagerly adopting the suggestion.

"Ay, ay! Cuttleby's to-night!" was echoed. "To Cuttleby's works!" Frank Cuttleby had confessed himself a dreamer. Here was one of his youthful dreams fulfilled the fiendish orgies on the moor in front of his home.

VOL. LVIII.

F

At least a thousand men of that assemblage marched down the road to Sheffield when the meeting had dispersed a thousand desperate men, clamorous for they knew not what, infuriated by the picture of fancied wrongs and imaginary oppressions and their password was "Cuttleby's works to-night!" The "Half-way House" had long been closed, but they forced open the door, and helped themselves to the liquor that was ready to their hands, and then, in sheer wantonness, turned on the taps, broached the casks, and left the landlord standing, helplessly, knee deep in his own ruin, while they, maddened by the drink, went on to their work of destruction.

"Now it's odd, missis," said the host of the "Half-way House," looking ruefully over the wreck they had left behind them, and calling to his wife, who was bemoaning their loss inside the bar-parlour, by turns railing at her husband for not offering a stouter resistance, and comforting herself from the contents of a little black bottle, which, having been kept in a private cupboard, had escaped the lips of the rioters-"it's very odd, but I'm danged if I don't think that fellow as stood outside, and tried to prevent the blackguards breaking the glasses after they'd had their fill of liquor, has been here before, stranger as he pretended to be! I knew him by his cursed hook nose!"

"And I thought I had seen his eyes before, somewhere," replied the spouse, stimulating her memory with another sip, "but I can't think where."

"I've got it!" cried the landlord, with sudden intelligence-" the chap as was here the day as the young lady run away from Stapleton Grange, as there was such a fuss about-old Cuttleby's daughter, or niece, or whatever she was, you know. I thought I remembered the beak!"

"Man alive, what nonsense you talk. younger, and a head and shoulders taller. beard, don't you mind ?"

That fellow was twenty years
Besides, he had a great black

"Beards is capable of being shaved off!" replied the landlord, sententiously. "And it's my belief it's the same man. I'd swear to the beak anywhere."

"The eyes was very much like," mused his wife, "but yet-no-the man as was here to-night was twenty years older than t'other, if he was a day. Bad luck to him and to his rabble, I only wish my poor brother 'd been alive and here he wouldn't have let 'em pull the place about like this!"

"Well," said the landlord, affecting not to hear this last lament over his deceased brother-in-law (who, to say the truth, was frequently dragged from his grave to be brought into damaging comparison with him)"well, it's still my belief that this here was the same man!"

Which of the two was right, the landlord or his wife? We shall find out before we have done, no doubt.

When the sun rose next day and he arose early on those August mornings-not a door was on the hinges at Cuttleby's works; not a pane of glass was in the windows; not a fragment of a box was left over the wheels in the grinding-room. The vengeance of the mob had been satiated by this last act of retribution, and they were forming outside the building to concert fresh plans. But in the counting-house one man was left;