some of those candles. They are entering the lane now. Gad, Tommy, if
they think your lad of spirit is here, I would not give much for your
window-glass!'

Mr. Thomasson, who had hastened to take the advice, and had extinguished
all the candles but one, thus reducing the room to partial darkness,
wrung his hands and moaned for answer. 'Where are the proctors?' he
said. 'Where are the constables? Where are the--Oh, dear, dear, this is
dreadful!'

And certainly, even in a man of firmer courage a little trepidation
might have been pardoned. As the unseen crowd, struggling and jostling,
poured from the roadway of St. Aldate's into the narrow confines of
Pembroke Lane, the sound of its hooting gathered sudden volume, and from
an intermittent murmur, as of a remote sea, swelled in a moment into a
roar of menace. And as a mob is capable of deeds from which the members
who compose it would severally shrink, as nothing is so pitiless,
nothing so unreasoning, so in the sound of its voice is a note that
appals all but the hardiest. Soane was no coward. A year before he had
been present at the siege of Bedford House by the Spitalfields weavers,
where swords were drawn and much blood was spilled, while the gentlemen
of the clubs and coffee-houses looked on as at a play; but even he felt
a slackening of the pulse as he listened. And with the Reverend
Frederick it was different. He was not framed for danger. When the
smoking glare of the links which the ringleaders carried began to dance
and flicker on the opposite houses, he looked about him with a wild eye,
and had already taken two steps towards the door, when it opened.

It admitted two men about Sir George's age, or a little younger. One,
after glancing round, passed hurriedly to the window and looked out; the