One of the young men, a native of the town, and son to the innkeeper, immediately procured a blanket, when, watching their opportunity as the supposed bailiff passed along, one tripped up his heels, while the rest received him in the extended blanket, and proceeded to the work-like play of giving the Black Kite an airing; or as Ready Rosser, a cunning clod of the party, expressed it, playing the wind-instrument to the tune of the Bumbailiff’s courante. The athletic employments of grasping the plough-handles, as they guided it through a stubborn soil, and the no less powerful exertions of wielding the axe, or hedge-bill, had their due effect in nerving the brawny arms of those youths of the farm and woodlands for this rough exercise.
Drawing the extended blanket as tight as a drumhead, with their united efforts, up they tossed, re-tossed, and received into what threatened to be his winding-sheet, the quivering and terribly-frightened body of the Rev. and very worshipful Inco Evans. Whatever it might be to the parson, (and we do not venture to assert that it was agreeable to him,) the spectator of this singular and unexpected entertainment could not but enjoy it for the comical revolutions of the right rev. gentleman were, to say the least of them, very mirth-inspiring. As he flew upward, all legs and wings, and descended in the same sprawling style, one compared him to a cat shot from a cannon; another to a staked toad tossed in the air; while the hapless victim of their frolic foamed at the mouth with rage, and uncouthly floundered in his attempt to grasp the blanket in his fall. If for a moment he seized its edge, and shouted his threats of vengeance, a terrific bump against the stony street loosened his hold, and up he bounced, again like the rebounding ball, struck on the flag-stone by the eager hand of a merry schoolboy.
Wearied by their arduous labours, and tempted by the shining handful of silver which the woe-begone parson eagerly offered as a conciliatory bribe, they at length desisted, each venting his jest on the crest-fallen Evans, “hoping it would be a warning not to prosecute again a poor friendless girl.” Inco answered not; but finding himself unable to walk, he was carried to the Inn, where he remained some days before he was able to remount his horse.