This circumstance sank deeply into the minds of the Stow revolters: it was a something that had never been heard of a clergyman in the memory of man,--at least at Stow in the parts of Lindsey: it made their skin creep, and the very "hair of their flesh to stand up,"--for they were simple, unsophisticated sort of people, and, therefore, all strong mental emotions had the same effects upon their physical frames, as the author of "Job" and Homer describe in their days. But the strong feeling did not evaporate through the pores of their skin, especially with the more noble, though tenderer, sex: _they_ laid their heads together to do such a deed upon a parson as had never been done upon one since the name of parson had been known in Stow. In a short time another message had to be despatched to the Perpetual Curate: a woman had to be churched, and a child to be buried, on the same afternoon,--and, judging from the former example, the villagers conjectured that his Reverence would "make himself scarce" after the churching, and leave this child, also, unburied. And now, a valorous army of the female gender, their pockets plentifully provided with plenipotent ammunition of eggs, formed themselves, in heroic ambuscade, near the church door, purposing right courageously to assail the clerical enemy, if he should haughtily refuse the offices of Christian sepulture to the deceased child. "Enterprises of great pith and moment," however, as the immortal one saith, often "their currents turn awry, and lose the name of action." So it was in this ambuscade so gloriously planned. The clerical enemy wisely capitulated: his clerk, "the Parson's Clerk," preceded the Perpetual Curate from the church, as a herald of moderation, assuring the armed battalion that his reverence would peaceably inter the child; and, forthwith, some of the gallant troop immediately _grounded_ their arms, while others preferred _throwing_ them to a distance,--in token that they put away all hostile thoughts far from them. And here, perchance, this chivalrous history might have ended, had not the demon of Litigation, who was doubtless hovering near the field of intended affray, taken the case into his own foul hands. Some part of the rejected artillery chanced to alight upon the garments of "the Parson's Clerk's" wife, and of the Perpetual Curate's servant-maid. It was in vain that the members of the ambuscade protested this mishap to be owing in no degree to their intent:--the parson commenced an action at law against the entire petticoat regiment, or its ringleaders, for "assault and battery."