With a free rein he soon overtook Forrester, and with him took his place in the rear of the now rapidly advancing cavalcade.
As Forrester had conjectured, the command of the party, such as it was, was assigned to the landlord.

There might have been something like forty or fifty men in all, the better portion of them mounted and well armed--some few on foot struggling to keep pace with the riders--all in high spirits, and indignant at the invasion of what they considered their own.

These, however, were not all hunters of the precious metal, and many of them, indeed, as the reader has by this time readily conjectured, carried on a business of very mixed complexion.

The whole village--blacksmith, grocer, baker, and clothier included, turned out _en masse_, upon the occasion; for, with an indisputable position in political economy, deriving their gains directly or indirectly from this pursuit, the cause was, in fact, a cause in common.
The scene of operations, in view of which they had now come, had to the eye all the appearance of a moderate encampment.

The intruding force had done the business completely.