It was to no purpose that the monk requested, and then commanded, that he should be permitted to pursue his journey alone. Stephen insisted upon accompanying him out of Gloucestershire, and father John, to avoid contention, feigned to defer his departure; but when the tables were spread, and the domestics and vassals had sat down to the feast, Margaret, who had been seeking the monk about the castle, looked and looked again among them all, and at length had to weep over the certainty that she should never more behold her brother. Nor did she; for John Ball did not long survive his exile. On the second anniversary of the bondman's freedom, his own spirit was freed, and his body rested in the cemetery of the monastery of Cistercium, in Burgundy.Then suddenly a great, a magnificent, a triumphant idea struck him. He nearly staggered under the force of it. He was like a general who sees what he had looked upon hitherto as a mere trivial skirmish develop into a battle which may win him the whole campaign. He spoke almost faintly.
TWO:"Thank God!" said Margaret faintly, as she took his hand and pressed it to her lips; "thank God, that you have returned to me without hurt or harm."
TWO:"Dissolve this society! impudent knave!" retorted the foreman: "I should like to know what new profession ye are fit for: how could ye live but for me? Think ye the sheriff would expose himself by communing with such untaught knaves? No more sulkiness, or I take you at your word. Give me another swoop of the goblet." It was handed to him, and, after ingulphing a long draught, he slowly drew breathhis eyes were observed to brighten with some new idea, and, in a moment after, he started from his seat, exclaiming, in a burst of joy:
THREE:"Hop it, lads!" shouted a workman. Their protectors were gone, mixed indescribably with their assailants. They must run, or they would be lynched.
THREE:The officer departed, and shortly afterwards re-appeared, and informed the judge that the Abbot of Gloucester was standing beside the prisoner and threatened to excommunicate the first who presumed to remove her.
