Joyce, always sensible, and with "her wits about her," as her mother often said, now closed and bolted the front door, and closed the shutters in the hall and the dining-room.
Then she went to the door leading to the garden, called the gardener, who, in spite of the tumult below, went on sweeping the fallen leaves together in a heap, as if it were the one great business of life.
"Henry," Joyce called; and, shouldering his broom, the man came with slow but sure steps up to the level gravel path under the windows. "Will you come round with me and see that all the doors and windows on the ground-floor are safely closed and barred, and the gate locked at the bottom of the garden?"
She turned back a moment, and taking a shawl from the hall, threw it over her head.
"Bars and doors won't keep 'em out if they've a mind to get in," said Henry; "the din is getting louder and louder. When will the master be back, ma'am?"
"I don't know quite. Yes," she said, "this door is safe; and I wonder how anyone could have climbed that wall?"
"Somebody _did_ climb it," he said, "for I found great footmarks here a week ago, and showed 'em to the master."
Joyce knew well enough whose footprints they were, but she said nothing.
"I should like you to come into the cellar with me, Henry," she said, turning to retrace her steps; and Falcon shouted from his watch-tower:
"They are making a greater noise than ever, mother, and I see such lots and lots of people on the quay. Come up, mother."
Then Joyce finished her inspection of the cellar, not without a thrill of remembered fear as she heard the creaking of the door, as it closed behind her.
"You had better stay in the kitchen with cook, Henry, and be on the watch till your master's return. He may not be home till very late, for the special constables are on duty; but what an increasing noise! What can be going on now?"
"They'll tear the Recorder limb from limb if they catch him; they are just like wild beasts in their rage against him. Lor! what a pity it is to meddle; let 'em have reform if they like, or leave it alone, it's no odds to me, nor thousands of other folk. It is a great ado about nothing; what will be, will be, and there's an end of it."
These opinions of Gilbert Arundel's gardener were decidedly safe, and had they been held by the mass of the Bristol people, the ensuing scenes of strife, fire, and bloodshed, would have been spared. But all men are not of the same easy, philosophical temperament!