"And will not one man in the town help him; no constables--no law?"

"Oh! he's a Quaker; the law don't help Quakers."

That was the truth--the hard, grinding truth--in those days.
Liberty, justice, were idle names to Nonconformists of every kind;
and all they knew of the glorious constitution of English law was
when its iron hand was turned against them.

I had forgotten this; bitterly I remembered it now. So wasting no
more words, I flew along the church-yard, until I saw, shining
against the boles of the chestnut-trees, a red light. It was one of
the hempen torches. Now, at last, I had got in the midst of that
small body of men, "the rioters."

They were a mere handful--not above two score--apparently the relics
of the band which had attacked the mill, joined with a few plough-
lads from the country around. But they were desperate; they had come
up the Coltham road so quietly, that, except this faint murmur,
neither I nor any one in the town could have told they were near.
Wherever they had been ransacking, as yet they had not attacked my
father's house; it stood up on the other side the road--barred,
black, silent.

I heard a muttering--"Th' old man bean't there."--"Nobody knows where
he be." No, thank God!

"Be us all y'ere?" said the man with the torch, holding it up so as
to see round him. It was well then that I appeared as Jem Watkins.
But no one noticed me, except one man, who skulked behind a tree, and