THE "SELBORNE MOB" 



led them to an attack on the poorhouse, where they 

 broke down the doors and made a bonfire of the 

 furniture ; then on to the neighbouring village of 

 Headley to get recruits for their little army. Then 

 the soldiery arrived on the scene, and took them 

 prisoners and sent them to Winchester, where they 

 were tried by some little unremembered Judge Jeffreys, 

 who sentenced many or most of them to transportation ; 

 but not the horn-blower, who had escaped, and was in 

 hiding among the beeches of the famous Selborne 

 Hanger. Only at midnight he would steal down 

 into the village to get a bite of food and hear the 

 news from his vigorous and vigilant wife. At length 

 during one of these midnight descents, he was seen, 

 and captured, and sent to Winchester. But by this 

 time the authorities had grown sick possibly ashamed 

 of dealing so harshly with a few poor peasants, 

 whose sufferings had made them mad, and the horn- 

 blower was pardoned, and died in bed at home when 

 his time came. 



I did not cease questioning the poor woman because 

 she would not admit that all she had heard about 

 Gilbert White was gone past recall. Often and often 

 had she thought of what her mother had told her. 

 Up to within two or three years ago she remembered 

 it all so well. What was it now ? Once more, stand- 

 ing dejected in the middle of the room, she would 

 cudgel her old brains. So much had happened since 

 she was a girl. She had been brought up to farm- 



