CHAPTER TENTH

GREAT GOINGS ON AT BARRINGTON CONTINUED


When Perez and the men who with him were in the act of advancing on
the jail, were so suddenly recalled by the cry that the people were
stoning the judges, Prudence had been left quite alone, sitting on
Perez' horse in the middle of the street. She had no clear idea what
all this crowd and commotion in the village was about, nor even what
the Stockbridge men had come down for in such martial array. She only
knew that Mrs. Hamlin's son, the captain with the sword, had said he
would bring her to her father, and now that he had run off taking all
the other men with him, she knew not what to do or which way to turn.
To her, thus perched up on the big horse, confused and scared by the
tumult, approached a tall, sallow, gaunt old woman, in a huge green
sunbonnet, and a butternut gown of coarsest homespun. Her features
were strongly marked, but their expression was not unkindly, though
just now troubled and anxious.

"I guess I've seen yew tew meetin," she said to Prudence. "Ain't you
Fennell's gal?"

"Yes," replied the girl, "I come daown to see father." Prudence,
although she had profited by having lived at service in the Woodbridge
family, where she heard good English spoken, had frequent lapses into