ancestors had lived for generations, remained in the clutches of those
who had seized it. Old age came upon Frank and found him
poverty-stricken; want came, "as an armed man," and found him too weak
to resist. The spirit was there, but no longer the strength that should
have helped the spirit. He sank and died, leaving behind him no shred of
worldly gear.

Another noted Northumbrian 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