You would hardly believe it; but the mob did actually drink the toast, and gave a cheer for the Colonel moreover, and then went peaceably home. But the question about the Quarter-Sessions was by no means settled. Some men held the opinion that neither Ferdinando nor Colonel Martinet had any right to dictate in person, but the whole bench should be composed of persons elected by the tenantry and villagers, independent of the landlords; and, for that purpose, they convened a meeting at the Frankfort Arms--a sort of joint-stock public-house, to which everybody who lived on the estates represented at Quarter-Sessions might come and welcome--to consider what rents should be paid, and what police maintained, and a variety of questions which were utterly beyond their province to decide. Nor had they the sense even to take this step without causing a new outcry, for they summoned to their meeting men from a farm belonging to the estate of Squire Copenhagen, and which had belonged to it since the days of Noah, on the pretext that the flood had unrighteously separated it from their jurisdiction at Quarter-Sessions! No sooner were they assembled at the Frankfort Arms than they declared the meeting to be perpetual, and voted themselves each a handsome allowance of five shillings per diem at the expense of the landlords; some of whom, like Martinet, paid their share of the subsidy because they could not well help themselves, whilst others, like Ferdinando, told the rascals who called with the subscription-book to go to the devil. Then they set about drawing up new regulations for the management of all the neighbouring estates, of which they now considered themselves the actual proprietors, calling the landlords mere trustees, and declaring that they would make them account strictly for past intromissions. Next, they ordered out a posse of watchmen and gamekeepers, and sent them down the river to occupy that farm of Squire Copenhagen's of which we have spoken, with the full consent of Martinet, who had long had an eye upon it for his own advantage. But they reckoned for once without their host, for Copenhagen was as brave as a lion, and determined to fight to the last drop of his blood before an acre of his estate should be confiscated; and Esquire North, who was a near relation of his, intimated that he should be ready at all times to back him in his reasonable quarrel.