Master Daws, who had from his post of observation at the window witnessed the scenes in the market-place with the most malignant satisfaction, as soon as the crowd marched off towards the vicarage with the effigy, and he saw the coast clear, could not repress his curiosity, and, stealing down, followed afar off to watch their operations. In the luckless moment of their panic and flight, he was so terrified and puzzled, that he could not regain the house, but ran with the crowd, and was thrown down by a pig; nor was this the worst, for it so happened that a man, leading a monkey, fell at the same moment, and jocko flew upon Daws and bit his right ear, till he screamed for agony: beyond this, however, and the tearing of his clothes, he sustained no injury. A worse fate waited the posture-master, the bear being infuriated at the hubbub, and having broken away from his master, seized him fiercely, and embraced him in a hug so fatal, that it produced contortions of countenance and a dislocation of bones very different from those he had so lately been exhibiting, and left him a cripple for life. The warning of his master’s danger had been communicated to plain Peter, that very morning, by the grateful old soldier, who had come to that fair with no other intention than rendering this service, he having heard a whisper of the intended doings in a tap at Bristol. It so chanced that old Noble was confined to the house by a sprain of the ankle, and his mistress was not well; so Peter kept from them all mention of these fears. The stratagem he adopted for putting the mob to flight was suggested by the old soldier, and cheerfully aided by a neighbouring farmer and two of his servants. Thus was the worthy parson protected in peace, and kept safe from the strife of tongues and the violence of a base rabble, throughout a day that was very threatening: unconscious himself how Daws had been undermining him, he had passed it in a frame of mind more than usually composed. Daws and his nephew continued their retreat without staying to pay their reckoning at the public-house. The greater part of the crowd, finding themselves on the road to Axbridge, proceeded there, to make up for their disappointment at Cheddar by a riot at that place instead. So few, indeed, returned, after they had got beyond the reach of danger, to find out the truth of it, and they squabbled so much among themselves, that Master Blount and the villagers were able to prevent further disturbance at that time. Before evening all the strange rabble departed; and the sun set on Cheddar as tranquilly as in happier times. CHAP. VI. It’s a hard fate to be slain for what a man should never willingly fight. RALEIGH.