"Do ye suffer this?" he said. "Do ye suffer me, who have placed
swords in your hands, to go forth in bonds, and to the death?"

"The stout earl wrongs no man," said a single voice, and the populace
echoed the word.

"Sir, then, I care not for life, since liberty is gone. I yield
myself your prisoner."

"A horse for my captive!" said Warwick, laughing; "and hear me promise
you, that he shall go unscathed in goods and in limbs. God wot, when
Warwick and the people meet, no victim should be sacrificed! Hurrah
for King Edward and fair England!"

He waved his plumed cap as he spoke, and within the walls of Olney was
heard the shout that answered.

Slowly the earl and his scanty troop turned the rein; as he receded,
the multitude broke up rapidly, and when the moon rose, that camp was
a solitude. [The dispersion of the rebels at Olney is forcibly
narrated by a few sentences, graphic from their brief simplicity, in
the "Pictorial History of England," Book V, p. 104. "They (Warwick,
etc.) repaired in a very friendly manner to Olney, where they found
Edward in a most unhappy condition; his friends were dead or
scattered, flying for their lives, or hiding themselves in remote
places: the insurgents were almost upon him. A word from Warwick sent
the insurgents quietly back to the North."]

Such--for our nature is ever grander in the individual than the mass--
such is the power of man above mankind!