The lane leading to the tan-yard was blocked up with a wild mob.

Even the stolid, starved patience of our Norton Bury poor had come to an end at last--they had followed the example of many others.

There was a bread-riot in the town.
God only knows how terrible those "riots" were; when the people rose in desperation, not from some delusion of crazy, blood-thirsty "patriotism," but to get food for themselves, their wives, and children.

God only knows what madness was in each individual heart of that concourse of poor wretches, styled "the mob," when every man took up arms, certain that there were before him but two alternatives, starving or--hanging.
The riot here was scarcely universal.

Norton Bury was not a large place, and had always abundance of small-pox and fevers to keep the poor down numerically.