He was of the fierce old Norse
blood, and his daughters were tall, fair, magnificent young women,
not at all uneducated nor vulgar, and it was the finding that my
brothers were becoming intimate at his farm that made Lord Erymanth
refuse to renew the lease and turn the family out so harshly, and
with as little notice as possible.
The cruelty, as they thought it, was, Miss Woolmer said, most ill-
judged, and precipitated the very thing that was dreaded. The youths
rushed into the marriage with the daughters, and cast in their lot
with all that could overturn the existing order of things, but Miss
Woolmer did not believe they had had anything to do with the rick-
burning or machine-breaking. All that was taken out of their hands
by more brutal, ignorant demagogues. They were mere visionaries and
enthusiasts according to her, and she said the two wives were very
noble-looking, high-spirited young women. She had gone to see them
several times when their husbands were in prison, and had been much
struck with Alice, Ambrose's wife, who held up most bravely; though
Dorothy, poor thing, was prostrated, and indeed her child was born in
the height of the distress, when his father had just been tried for
his life, and sentenced to death.
It was their birth and education that caused them to be treated so
severely; besides, there was no doubt of their having harangued the
people, and stirred them up, and they were seen, as well as
Prometesky, at the fire at what had been Lewthwayte's farm; at least,
so it was declared by men who turned King's evidence, and the proof
to the contrary broke down, because it depended on the wives, whose
evidence was not admissible; indeed that--as the law then stood--was
not the question.
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