We were rolling one afternoon along a certain Knight’s Hill or road which skirted a stretch of common, when we came upon a great inn, called The Horns, where was a considerable concourse of people assembled, all in blue cockades, and buzzing like a hive about to swarm. The word most in the mouths of this draff was Pope, which at first we took to mean the Vicar of Rome, but soon understood for the name of a young Jesuit who was lately come as chaplain to a Catholic family of the neighbourhood. Now, such insolent defiance of the penal laws was not to be tolerated, and so the loyal Protestant burghers of Dulwich were going, with no disrespect to the family, to cast down its graven images, and hang up its chaplain for a scarecrow to all propagandists who should venture out of the Holy See into our tight little island. And here they were gathered to organise themselves, the process taking good account of malt liquors; and hence, when they moved off, we, to cut the story short, accompanied them walking, foreseeing some prospect of “swag” in the crusade. Going in a pretty compact body, with a great deal of howling and hymning, such as that with which all conscripts, either of the cross or guillotine, are accustomed to stimulate one another’s courage and vanity, we crossed a Croksted Lane, and again a sweep of wild heath, that spread towards the dense forests called Northwood, which fill all that shallow valley from Sydenham Wells on the north to Penge Common on the south. And presently coming to the trees, and entering a wide, elegant clearing amidst them, where the woods were banked behind, and the ground dropped towards us in terraces, on the highest we saw the house standing, a great sunny block of brick and stone, but shuttered now, and apparently lifeless. The mob at first knocked on the door with a diffidence inspired of its varnished and portly exclusiveness; but, provoking no response, presently grew bolder and more clamorous. Still, I believe, its fervour would ultimately have wasted itself on this inflexible barrier, had not my master, with some disgusted expressions of contempt, come to the front and taunted it on to a violence the more vicious because it was shamefaced. Under his stimulus, then, the panels were beginning to crack, when in a moment the bolts flew, and there stood in the opening a little sinister fellow in grey, who asked us, curt and ironic, our business. All but my master fell back before him, though there were some broken cries touching the Scarlet Woman, which the sweep took up. The little man wrinkled his little acrid nose. He was nobody, it turned out, but the Scotch steward, holding staunch to his post; but he was cut and coloured like steel. “D’ye ask here for your doxy?” he said. “Go back, man, and look where you left her in the tavern.” The sweep, only half understanding, spat out a mouthful of oaths. “We want that there Pope!” he roared. “Bring us to the black devil, you.”