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Updated: May 24, 2025
Up the Valley and down it, from Tuxedo to Ridgewood, there had been a half-score robberies of a very different order depredations wrought, manifestly, by professionals; thieves whose motor cars served the twentieth century purpose of such historic steeds as Dick Turpin's Black Bess and Jack Shepard's Ranter.
To my surprise, the two seemed to know one another, for Darrell broke into a scornful laugh, exclaiming: "Again, Master Tate! What, haven't you left this accursed city to its fate yet?" "It awaits its fate," answered the Ranter sternly, "even as those of your superstition wait theirs."
A mere ranter, a frothy mob orator, would have been silenced long before. But this man had somehow got hold of the great assembly, had conquered them by sheer force of will; in a battle of one will against thousands the one had conquered, and would hold its own till it had administered the hard home-thrust which would make the thousands wince and retaliate.
"Silence!" cried a loud voice, and every one obeyed the mandate, looking towards the speaker, who was a tall, gaunt-looking man, attired in a suit of faded black, and who now pressed forward to the front of the throng. "Oh!" cried one, "it's Fletcher, the ranter. What does he do here?" "Hear him! hear him!" cried others; "he won't stop us."
Nothing could be less like the ordinary type of the Ranter than Dinah. She was not preaching as she heard others preach, but speaking directly from her own emotions and under the inspiration of her own simple faith. But now she had entered into a new current of feeling.
He now forsook the company of the profane and licentious, and sought that of a poor man who had the reputation of piety, but, to his grief, he found him "a devilish ranter, given up to all manner of uncleanness; he would laugh at all exhortations to sobriety, and deny that there was a God, an angel, or a spirit."
He means well." "Yes, you sinners," said the ranter, "and if you find Miles, the butcher, decaying even as men are expected to decay whose mortal tabernacles are placed within the bowels of the earth you shall gather from that a great omen, and a sign that if you follow me you seek the Lord; but I you find him looking fresh and healthy, as if the warm blood was still within his veins, you shall take that likewise as a signification that what I say to you shall be as the Gospel, and that by coming to the chapel of the Little Boozlehum, ye shall achieve a great salvation."
A thousand jokes of this kind were uttered; the wine circulated, supper was served in, we ate heartily, returned to the bottle, Bragwell became noisy and troublesome, Banter grew more and more severe, Ranter rehearsed, Slyboot made faces at the whole company, I sang French catches, and Chatter kissed me with great affection; while the doctor, with a wofull countenance, sat silent like a disciple of Pythagoras.
The plot of this play, and some of the characters, particularly Sir Patient, is borrowed from Moliere's Malades Imaginaires. The Widow Ranter; or the History of Bacon in Virginia, a Tragi-Comedy, acted by the King's company, and printed 1690. It is uncertain where she had the history of Bacon; but the catastrophe seems founded on the story of Cassius, who died by the hand of his freed man.
Tom Hitchings, the cartman, declared that they should have been sent to the Colonies, the same as the other smugglers; and Ted Robson said transportation was too good a punishment, they ought to have been shot or bayonetted, and had any other person but a ranter preacher been in charge it would have been done.
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