The current
rumour was that the Stuart, with fifty thousand Highlanders, savages who
disembowelled women for sport and roasted children for food, had sacked
Manchester and was now marching south, with hell in his heart and
desolation in his train. If one-hundredth of it were true, the worthy
mayor had his work cut out, for the town was so ill-found that it would
have fallen to a bombardment of turnips.
I took my stand on the town-hall steps to scan the scene and collect my
thoughts. And here I had the best of luck, for who should come clanking
down the steps but Jack Dobson. I had no need to envy him now, having
better work on hand than his, but even if the mood of the midday had been
prevailing, it would have disappeared before his hearty greeting.
"Noll, by gad, Noll," he cried, wringing my hand joyously. "I am glad to
see you, bully-boy; I thought you were sulking in your tent like--like,
you know his name, the fellow old Bloggs was always yarning about."
"Iphigenia," said I.
"Was that the chap?" he said cheerily. "And now I've got you, come along
to the house. I've more to tell you than there is in all your silly old
Virgil, and it's alive, man, alive, alive.
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