The propensity to public speaking perhaps added to the excitement, for Norman May and Harvey Anderson, for once in unison, each made a vehement harangue in the school-court--Anderson’s a fine specimen of the village Hampden style, about Britons never suffering indignities, and free-born Englishmen swelling at injuries.
“That they do, my hearty,” interjected Larkins, pointing to an inflamed eye that had not returned to its right dimensions. However, Anderson went on unmoved by the under titter, and demonstrated, to the full satisfaction of all the audience, that nothing could be more illegal and unfounded than the brewer’s claims.
Then came a great outburst from Norman, with all his father’s headlong vehemence; the way was the right of the town, the walk had been trodden by their forefathers for generations past--it had been made by the good old generous-hearted man who loved his town and townspeople, and would have heard with shame and anger of a stranger, a new inhabitant, a grasping radical, caring, as radicals always did, for no rights, but for their own chance of unjust gains, coming here to Stoneborough to cut them off from their own path. He talk of liberalism and the rights of the poor! He who cut off Randall’s poor old creatures in the almshouses from their short way! and then came some stories of his oppression as a poor-law guardian, which greatly aggravated the wrath of the speaker and audience, though otherwise they did not exactly bear on the subject.
“What would old Nicholas Randall say to these nineteenth-century doings?” finished Norman.
“Down, with them!” cried a voice from the throng, probably Larkins’s; but there was no desire to investigate, it was the universal sentiment. “Down with it! Hurrah, we’ll have our footpath open again! Down with the fences! Britons never shall be slaves!” as Larkins finally ejaculated.
“That’s the way to bring it to bear!” said Harvey Anderson, “See if he dares to bring an action against us. Hurrah!”
“Yes, that’s the way to settle it,” said Norman. “Let’s have it down. It is an oppressive, arbitrary, shameful proceeding, and we’ll show him we won’t submit to it!”
Carried along by the general feeling, the whole troop of boys dashed shouting up to the barricade at the entrance of the field, and levelled it with the ground. A handkerchief was fastened to the top of one of the stakes, and waved over the brewhouse wall, and some of the boys were for picking up stones and dirt, and launching them over, in hopes of spoiling the beer; but Norman put a stop to this, and brought them back to the school-yard, still in a noisy state of exultation.