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"There was that cockney sergeant fellow here along about midnight, asking questions and raising hell. The town marshal had a rumpus with him and went to bed mad." The half-dozen hangers-on about the railway station, and the roisterers at the one, open-all-night saloon were growing inquisitive, if not impudent.
The barbarian roisterers then proceeded blustering along the road, when they chanced to meet a colonist. They immediately took him into custody, kept him for some time, loading him with taunts and ridicule, and then dismissed him, derisively telling him to be a good man, and not to tell any lies or work on the Lord's day.
Then from the window above came a shrill, jeering cry: "To your task, bold Scourers to your task! Scour your own fine friend and comrade. Scour him well, for he will need it. Scour him from head to foot. A pest upon you, young villains! I would every citizen in London would serve you the same!" Then the window above was banged to. The mob of roisterers fled helter skelter, laughing and jeering.
The slenderness of the attendance at Court that evening, and the cold wind, which swept even the narrowest streets and drove roisterers indoors, rendered it unlikely that we should be stopped or molested by any except professed thieves; and for these I was prepared.
And respectfully, though determinedly, as one would guide a flock of sheep, he turned the roisterers toward the door that led into the private assembly-room. He had just learned that the Jesuits had arrived and that there was no room for them at the episcopal palace, and that they were on their way to the Corne d'Abondance.
Not being of quick minds or sentiments, these country roisterers failed to understand the heavy cloud of spleen and lack of spirit they experienced, and as they filled their glasses and tossed off one bumper after another to cure it, they soon began again to laugh and fell into boisterous joking.
Here now was the idea of the Mate. Somewhere for each of them was a "Kitty," a "daisy Sunday best-day girl"; the eternal feminine; the softer side; the tenderness, beauty, glory of even so harsh a world as they were compelled to inhabit. At the present or in the past these woods roisterers, this Fighting Forty, had known love. Thorpe arose abruptly and turned at random into the forest.
"Down on your knees!" cried the leader of the young roisterers, and with his left hand he thrust a blazing torch into the grey beard of Malise. There was a quick snort of anger. Then, with a burst of relief and pleasure, came the words, "By God, I'll clout him now!"
And the vicomte caught the poet by the arm and dragged him into the private assembly. Around a huge silver bowl sat a company of roisterers, all flushed with wine and the attendant false happiness. Long clay pipes clouded the candle-light; there was the jingle of gold and the purr of shuffling cards; and here and there were some given to the voicing of ribald songs.
Peter Arbuthnot Forbes, sometime London barrister, at present Secretary to the Council of the Province. He differed from some of his neighbors in that he abominated pirates and would have given them short shift. A trifle near-sighted, he was quite close to the tavern before he espied his own nephew and ward, Jack Cockrell, in this shameful company of roisterers.
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