"Down with the old tyrant! Thrash him! Hang him! Tar and feather the
viper's fry! the wizard! the body-snatcher!" bellowed the mob, one
member of which was raving with delirium tremens, and another was a
madman just escaped from bedlam.

It is unaccountable where all this mischievous, bloodthirsty multitude
came from,--how they were born into that quietness in such a moment of
time! What had they been about heretofore? Were they waiting in
readiness for this crisis, and keeping themselves free from other
employment till it should come to pass? Had they been created for the
moment, or were they fiends sent by Satan in the likeness of a
blackguard population? There you might see the offscourings of the
recently finished war,--old soldiers, rusty, wooden-legged: there,
sailors, ripe for any kind of mischief; there, the drunken population
of a neighboring grogshop, staggering helter-skelter to the scene, and
tumbling over one another at the Doctor's feet. There came the father
of the punished urchin, who had never shown heretofore any care for his
street-bred progeny, but who now came pale with rage, armed with a pair
of tongs; and with him the mother, flying like a fury, with her cap
awry, and clutching a broomstick, as if she were a witch just alighted.
Up they rushed from cellar doors, and dropped down from chamber
windows; all rushing upon the Doctor, but overturning and thwarting
themselves by their very multitude. For, as good Doctor Grim levelled
the first that came within reach of his fist, two or three of the
others tumbled over him and lay grovelling at his feet; the Doctor
meanwhile having retreated into the angle between two houses. Little
Ned, with a valor which did him the more credit inasmuch as it was
exercised in spite of a good deal of childish trepidation, as his pale
face indicated, brandished his fists by the Doctor's side; and little