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"Middlin'," answered the man, a woodcutter on the Steens estate. "He took it at three in the morning and never said another word, but passed away a little under two hours agone; and the funeral's on Thursday." Roger laid down the watch and stood erect. The band in the street still thumped out the Flora tune. "Malachi," said he, "can you dance the Flora?"
But let God be my witness " and Roger lifted his fist to the dark night "they shall take my life from me when I quit Steens, and kill the man in me before I renounce it. Amen!" "Is that your last word, Stephen?" "It is, sir." "Then," said the little man gravely, "as you may need me soon to beg mercy for you, I have a bargain to make. You are fighting with one woman: beware how you fight with two."
Leaping through, they found themselves in the midst of a cheerful and entirely passive crowd, lining the road in front of Steens' wall, the gate of which had been closed with large baulks of timber from the mines. The crowd numbered perhaps three hundred, and included men, women and children.
Finding that the slope behind the house commanded an open space in the south-west corner of the yard, they even began to erect a breastwork here, behind which they might defy musketry. That night fifty-six men supped in Steens kitchen, drank Roger's health, and laughed over their labours.
He had made many such expeditions always, however, with an escort of four or five; for although the Justices held their hands, and made no attempt to arrest the dispersed conspirators in their own homes but suffered them there to go about their private occupations, the purchase of victuals for the besieged house was another matter, and rumour had more than once come to Steens that the Helleston constables meant to challenge it by force.
Then Trevarthen went on to tell for the wonders of the day were not over how on their homeward road they had caught up with a messenger from Truro hurrying towards Steens, with word that the new Sheriff was already on the march with a regiment drawn off from the barracks at Plymouth, and had reached Bodmin. In two days' time they might find themselves besieged again.
Trudgian gets up my case. And with that they fetched me over to Trudgian's office and paid me down on the table; 'for, says the lawyer, 'we won't put expense on a man so poor as Roger Stephen is like to be, though he have given these fal-lals a useless journey. 'Tell ye what, master; they mean to have you out of Steens if they can, that pair." "Let 'em come and try," said Roger grimly.
Madam Vanderkipperhaerin was Rich, and had a beautiful Summer Villa all glistening with Bee's-waxed Campeachy-wood and Polished Brass on the River Amstel, some three miles from the City. She had a whole Cabinet full of Ostades and Jan Steens in ebony frames, and a Side-board of Antique Plate that might have made Cranbourn Alley jealous.
On their way through Wendron church-town they were hissed and pelted with lumps of turf; but this hint of popular feeling made slight impression on the sanguine Sheriff, who had convinced himself that the resistance of Steens would collapse at the sight of his redcoats.
The fog had concealed from the Sheriff that he was fighting, as his predecessor had fought, within a ring of spectators many hundreds in number; and to-day not a few of these spectators had brought guns. It is said that in the hottest of the fray Trevarthen broke out from the rear of Steens and marshalled them.
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