Page:All the Year Round - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/222

212[January 30, 1869] schoolmistress. The sword fell on them ruthlessly, one sickened in prison, where fever prevailed, and died there. Another poor girl, pleading for mercy to Jefferies, was handed over by him to the jailer, and died of despair in a few hours. The Tory member for Bridgewater undertook to exact seven thousand pounds as the ransom of these children. That sum was to be the booty of the maids of honour, for even James's queen was at this time sharing in the confiscations and the sale of slaves to the plantations. The ransoms thus obtained at this time were very large—one gentleman paid Jefferies fifteen thousand pounds. Roger Hoare, a merchant of Bridgewater, disbursed one thousand pounds. Hundreds of poor Somersetshire men were sent as slaves for ten years to the West Indies. The voyage out was terrible indeed. Wounded rebels, never visited by surgeons since Sedgemoor, were thrown in heaps into the holds of small cranky vessels. The sharks soon had half of them. They could neither stand up nor sleep. Rotten biscuit and foul water were given them scantily and at long intervals. They were not suffered to go on deck for weeks together, and armed men guarded the hatchway. Every hold was a seething mass of groaning misery. Death alone showed mercy to those unhappy men. In one vessel alone, twenty-two convicts out of ninety-nine died before the vessel reached Jamaica, though after an unusually quick journey.

After the assizes, as Fox says, all the west became an Aceldama, nothing was to be seen in it but forsaken walls, dismal gibbets, and ghastly carcases. At last Jefferies proposed "to jog homewards" after his campaign, having transported three hundred and eighty-five persons and hung ninety-seven. Then came the cruel confiscations and greedy divisions of the property of those dead men whose heads scowled over the church porches, or whose bodies hung beside the park gates. The Bloody Assize will never be forgotten in Taunton. 

  .—Arose after one of those weary nights with heart very sore, having awakened in great trouble. A sense as if a great blow had fallen on me: and a short way off, on the table, I could see the fatal silver pile. Yet I looked at it, not with disgust, but with a strange interest, much as a woman does on a faithless admirer whom she still loves. There they were piled up in that almost picturesque disorder into which piles of money fall, and then came the unworthy consolation, of which I feel ashamed, and yet which has force, namely, "that it turned out well on the whole," and there was no harm done. And yet had there been loss there should not have been a bit of difference. . . .. Yes, it shall go to the poor—the Lutheran and the Catholic poor, in equal shares, and I must add a couple of pieces to make it round, and as a little penalty. Somehow these early grey hours of the morning do make one feel so wretched. It is the only drawback of early rising. Have something on your mind, rise betimes, and walk a little through a lonely town, and you will see your trouble laid in the blackest colours. After breakfast, towards noon, it fades out. Rising for a journey, at, say, five, makes me utterly miserable and low spirited. Now I must train myself a little. Another man would let this prey on him: I shall put it away from me: it is no use, it is unmanly, whining over anything that cannot be recalled. Why, when we see the Bishop of 's nieces "putting down," the Bishop himself reading the Times just outside, it cannot be the unpardonable sin exactly.

See how a little fall of this sort brings its own inconveniences. The dean, who has not noticed me for a long time, stopped me in the walk.

"Fie! fie!" he said. "Is this the end of the good thoughts and pious sentiments? Ah! Did I not warn you, my friend?"

Now, my dear Dora and darling, you see I set all this down as a little lesson. And I am not ashamed of it. I answered him without anger:

"I deserve your reproof, Mr. Dean. We are not all perfect, and you have often, I dare say, repeated in the pulpit a number of times, A just man will fall. Over such a fall, however, there is no ground for congratulation, or, as the vulgar would say, chuckling." On that I turned away.

Receive a telegram from the merchant, at Frankfort, saying he will be at his house at four, and sign the papers, if I bring them and an English witness. I am not sorry to hear this, for it was hanging over me that I might be kept here for an immense time. I should be glad to be home, my health is almost restored, and I have no doubt an easy journey, with a little lingering at some of the noble and curious towns on the road, would be more profitable than the waters. I feel a "flurry" beginning in this place. It is living in a heated ballroom; but who shall I get as a witness? I know no one. Grainger came in as I was writing. The very man. And yet I don't like quite admitting him to that confidence. It is too familiar; but as I shall