 crowd.
 

                                  Chapter LIII

The next day was ushered in by merry peals of bells, and by the firing of the
Tower guns; flags were hoisted on many of the church-steeples; the usual
demonstrations were made in honour of the anniversary of the King's birthday;
and every man went about his pleasure or business as if the city were in perfect
order, and there were no half-smouldering embers in its secret places, which, on
the approach of night, would kindle up again and scatter ruin and dismay abroad.
The leaders of the riot, rendered still more daring by the success of last night
and by the booty they had acquired, kept steadily together, and only thought of
implicating the mass of their followers so deeply that no hope of pardon or
reward might tempt them to betray their more notorious confederates into the
hands of justice.
    Indeed, the sense of having gone too far to be forgiven, held the timid
together no less than the bold. Many who would readily have pointed out the
foremost rioters and given evidence against them, felt that escape by that means
was hopeless, when their every act had been observed by scores of people who had
taken no part in the disturbances; who had suffered in their persons, peace, or
property, by the outrages of the mob; who would be most willing witnesses; and
whom the government would, no doubt, prefer to any King's evidence that might be
offered. Many of this class had deserted their usual occupations on the Saturday
morning; some had been seen by their employers active in the tumult; others knew
they must be suspected, and that they would be discharged if they returned;
others had been desperate from the beginning, and comforted themselves with the
homely proverb, that, being hanged at all, they might as well be hanged for a
sheep as a lamb. They all hoped and believed, in a greater or less degree, that
the government they seemed to have paralysed, would, in its terror, come to
terms with them in the end, and suffer them to make their own conditions. The
least sanguine among them reasoned with himself that, at the worst, they were
too many to be all punished, and that he had as good a chance of escape as any
other man. The great mass never reasoned or thought at all, but were stimulated
by their own headlong passions, by poverty, by ignorance, by the love of
mischief, and the hope of plunder.
    One other circumstance is worthy of remark; and that is, that from the
moment of their first outbreak
