 flitted onward, and was
gone.
    As it passed away upon its work of wrath and ruin, a piercing scream was
heard. A knot of persons ran towards the spot; Gashford, who just then emerged
into the street, among them. He was on the outskirts of the little concourse,
and could not see or hear what passed within; but one who had a better place,
informed him that a widow woman had descried her son among the rioters.
    »Is that all?« said the secretary, turning his face homewards. »Well! I
think this looks a little more like business!«
 

                                   Chapter LI

Promising as these outrages were to Gashford's view, and much like business as
they looked, they extended that night no farther. The soldiers were again called
out, again they took half-a-dozen prisoners, and again the crowd dispersed after
a short and bloodless scuffle. Hot and drunken though they were, they had not
yet broken all bounds and set all law and government at defiance. Something of
their habitual deference to the authority erected by society for its own
preservation yet remained among them, and had its majesty been vindicated in
time, the secretary would have had to digest a bitter disappointment.
    By midnight, the streets were clear and quiet, and, save that there stood in
two parts of the town a heap of nodding walls and pile of rubbish, where there
had been at sunset a rich and handsome building, everything wore its usual
aspect. Even the Catholic gentry and tradesmen, of whom there were many resident
in different parts of the City and its suburbs, had no fear for their lives or
property, and but little indignation for the wrong they had already sustained in
the plunder and destruction of their temples of worship. An honest confidence in
the government under whose protection they had lived for many years, and a
well-founded reliance on the good feeling and right thinking of the great mass
of the community, with whom, notwithstanding their religious differences, they
were every day in habits of confidential, affectionate, and friendly
intercourse, reassured them, even under the excesses that had been committed;
and convinced them that they who were Protestants in anything but the name, were
no more to be considered as abettors of these disgraceful occurrences, than they
themselves were chargeable with the uses of the block, the rack, the gibbet, and
the stake in cruel Mary's reign.
    The clock was on the stroke of one, when Gabriel Varden, with his lady and
Miss Miggs, sat waiting in the little parlour. This fact; the
