But it has been a sweet thraldom. When Mary had made up her mind she was not one to let the grass grow under her feet, and the very next evening she told me to get me dressed if I meant to go with her to th' Brigg. So off we set together by Kitchen Fold, over Crossland Moor, past the plantation where Mr. Horsfall had been shot, and so dropped down into th' Brigg. I pointed out to Mary the marks of the bullets on the wall on the road side opposite the little wood; but Mary shivered and drew her shawl tighter about her and hurried on, casting frightened glances at the clump of trees and bush as if she feared to see a ghost. She would not let me go with her to Walker's, bidding me meet her in an hour's time on the Brigg and be ready to company her back. So I thought I might as well comfort myself with a glass at th' Nag's Head. It was not so long since that the landlord would have fussed about me as I drank my ale and offered me a treat. But now, as I sat aloof from the little company and took my drink, he talked pointedly to the other customers about the honest way he had always kept his house, saying he would have neither Luds nor their brass at th' Nag's Head and their room was better nor their company. But I would not be hurried for the likes of him, and called for another gill and made it last out my hour just to spite him. Mary did not keep me waiting long on th' Brigg, and fain I was to be off, for little knots of people were clustered in the street and many a look was cast at me, not over friendly; and faces that I knew well enough looked stonily at me, and one or two that knew me well enough, and to whom I gave the day, made as tho' they did not know me from Adam. It was plain as a pike-staff that the folk at th' Brigg were fleyed out of their wits of being suspected of having ought to do with the Luds. They altered their tune later on, when th' first panic had passed, but for a week or two after George and Thorpe were taken every man was on his best behaviour, and a good many lived in hourly fear and trembling.