There was more than
one woman there, disguised in man's attire, and bent upon the rescue
of a child or brother. There were the two sons of a man who lay under
sentence of death, and who was to be executed along with three
others, on the next day but one. There was a great parry of boys whose
fellow-pickpockets were in the prison; and at the skirts of all, a score
of miserable women, outcasts from the world, seeking to release some
other fallen creature as miserable as themselves, or moved by a general
sympathy perhaps--God knows--with all who were without hope, and
wretched.
Old swords, and pistols without ball or powder; sledge-hammers, knives,
axes, saws, and weapons pillaged from the butchers' shops; a forest of
iron bars and wooden clubs; long ladders for scaling the walls, each
carried on the shoulders of a dozen men; lighted torches; tow smeared
with pitch, and tar, and brimstone; staves roughly plucked from fence
and paling; and even crutches taken from crippled beggars in the
streets; composed their arms. When all was ready, Hugh and Dennis, with
Simon Tappertit between them, led the way. Roaring and chafing like an
angry sea, the crowd pressed after them.
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