and sixpence a day, and the warden should have two hundred or three
hundred pounds instead of eight hundred pounds. What is unjust must
be wrong; what is wrong should be righted; and if he declined the
task, who else would do it?

"Each one of you is clearly entitled to one hundred pounds a year by
common law": such had been the important whisper made by Finney into
the ears of Abel Handy, and by him retailed to his eleven brethren.

Too much must not be expected from the flesh and blood even of John
Hiram's bedesmen, and the positive promise of one hundred a year to
each of the twelve old men had its way with most of them. The great
Bunce was not to be wiled away, and was upheld in his orthodoxy by
two adherents. Abel Handy, who was the leader of the aspirants after
wealth, had, alas, a stronger following. No less than five of the
twelve soon believed that his views were just, making with their
leader a moiety of the hospital. The other three, volatile unstable
minds, vacillated between the two chieftains, now led away by the hope
of gold, now anxious to propitiate the powers that still existed.

It had been proposed to address a petition to the bishop as visitor,
praying his lordship to see justice done to the legal recipients of
John Hiram's Charity, and to send copies of this petition and of the
reply it would elicit to all the leading London papers, and thereby
to obtain notoriety for the subject. This it was thought would pave
the way for ulterior legal proceedings. It would have been a great
thing to have had the signatures and marks of all the twelve injured
legatees; but this was impossible: Bunce would have cut his hand off
sooner than have signed it. It was then suggested by Finney that
if even eleven could be induced to sanction the document, the one