Another untoward event thickened the quarrel, and doubled the action at law; but the event itself cannot be so distinctly related as the last, seeing it occurred in the dark, while the female ambuscade was planted by broad daylight. The successor of the bishops, bearing a staff instead of a crosier, and his chosen Amen, bearing a hayfork, chanced to meet two youths connected with the revolters, one evening after dusk, in the churchyard. Who gave the primal assault cannot be positively affirmed, for it is not over safe to speak closely after the parties in a squabble, when there are no other witnesses. However, a fight certainly took place, even among the tombs of the dead; and so high did the wrath of the belligerent Clerk Spurr rise in the conflict, that a cottager, neighbouring to the church, heard with alarm, even at his own door, the said clerkly warrior threaten to stab his opponent with the hayfork! Ere the cottager could quit his door, up came the parson and demanded help; but the cottager honestly told the parson "he would look better at home." His Reverence then sought "help" at the blacksmith's shop, but there, also, no one thought he needed it,--and so he retreated to his lodgings. Such, in a few words, was the cause of the double action at law; and, at the ensuing Kirton sessions, the two youngsters who had either cudgelled the parson, or had been cudgelled themselves, together with the ringleaders of the famous female ambuscade, were together tried for "assault and battery." But the wrathful parson did not get his will: the affair was so ludicrous that he was compelled to consent that it should be "hushed up." To hush up the heart-burnings of the parties, on their return to the seat of war, was, however, not so easy a matter. Above all things, did it now become a difficult task to keep peace between the rival clerks. Passing by the many minor occasions wherein fiery frowns and black glances were exchanged, this history, which we must abridge, through dread of being adjudged tedious, conducts us to another notable event, which became the subject of _another_ "action-at-law," at a succeeding Kirton Quarter Sessions. The funeral of a parishioner was about to take place, and the friends of the deceased "particularly requested" that Clerk William Middleton, the son of Clerk Gervase,--the true "Parish Clerk,"--the old, hereditary, and established, and legitimate pronouncer of conclusive amens,--might give the responses at this funeral. Clerk Spurr, the "Parson's Clerk," however, determined on contesting the point;--and--a struggle for the old folio prayer-book actually took place in the church!