wild hilly piece of ground between Northumberland and Cumberland);
the signal that was to be given for this flight, and for the
simultaneous turning out of the volunteers under arms--which said
signal was to consist (if I remember rightly) in ringing the church
bells in a particular and ominous manner. One day, when Miss
Jenkyns and her hosts were at a dinner-party in Newcastle, this
warning summons was actually given (not a very wise proceeding, if
there be any truth in the moral attached to the fable of the Boy
and the Wolf; but so it was), and Miss Jenkyns, hardly recovered
from her fright, wrote the next day to describe the sound, the
breathless shock, the hurry and alarm; and then, taking breath, she
added, "How trivial, my dear father, do all our apprehensions of
the last evening appear, at the present moment, to calm and
enquiring minds!" And here Miss Matty broke in with -

"But, indeed, my dear, they were not at all trivial or trifling at
the time. I know I used to wake up in the night many a time and
think I heard the tramp of the French entering Cranford. Many
people talked of hiding themselves in the salt mines--and meat
would have kept capitally down there, only perhaps we should have
been thirsty. And my father preached a whole set of sermons on the
occasion; one set in the mornings, all about David and Goliath, to
spirit up the people to fighting with spades or bricks, if need
were; and the other set in the afternoons, proving that Napoleon
(that was another name for Bony, as we used to call him) was all
the same as an Apollyon and Abaddon. I remember my father rather
thought he should be asked to print this last set; but the parish
had, perhaps, had enough of them with hearing."

Peter Marmaduke Arley Jenkyns ("poor Peter!" as Miss Matty began to