against the palings, lie then pulled out a
dagger and struck at the other, crying:

"You are the other!"

Sir William pursued him as he fled; but,
stumbling, Mears got away and ran straight to
magistrates to tell them of the murder.

When he had committed this murder,
Courtenay, now on the full road to the accomplishment
of his ideal, cried out to his followers,
"I'll show them!" He then, in a frenzy of
delight, dragged poor Mears by the collar round
the place; the dying man groaned, "I am
not the constable." Courtenay replied, " You
told me you were." He then turned him on his
right side, so as to be able to strike him with
his sword on the left side of the neck. He
then cut him several times. After each blow
Mears's head jumped up. Mears groaned;
Courtenay then shot him through the body
and killed him. He ordered four men to carry
the body to an adjacent ditch. When they
returned, the madman broke into a rhapsody of
exultation. The work was going well. A
second Gideon had come to slay the ungodly.
Thus would perish all who opposed the prophet
Courtenay; for so the angel in the sun had
promised.

He stretched out his sword and cried:

"I am the only saviour of you all. You need
not fear, for I will bring you through all."

The excitement now had become so general,
and the menaces of Courtenay and his armed party
were so alarming, that the county magistrates
resolved on the instant capture of this dangerous
maniac and his brutishly ignorant followers. At
twelve o'clock, the magistrates came up to Thom
and his party at a place called the Osier Bed.
Courtenay's men threatened the magistrates and
constables, with bludgeons and fire-arms. The
Knight of Malta defied interruption, and
discharged his pistol at the Rev. Mr. Handley,
of Herne Hill, who, with his brother, attempted
his arrest. He and his party then broke away
to Bossenden Wood, and lay there in ambuscade:
Sir William announcing his intention of
shooting the first man who interfered with him.
No means presented themselves by which the
ringleader and his men could with safety be
secured. The magistrates saw but one resource.
To send at once for a detachment, of the 45th
Regiment from Canterbury barracks.

About twenty miles from Chatham, beyond
the Ville of Dunkirk, near the head of the hill,
there is a gate on the left hand leading into
Bossenden Wood. Here, with bags of bullets and
matches, the madman and his brutalised followers
took shelter: as the outlaws of Wat Tyler's or
Jack Cade's broken bands might have done
centuries before. The madman was confident and
elate. He only waited for the soldiers to rush
on them, to fling some dust in the air, and cull
on the angels to come down. One of the men
falls down before Courtenay in utter prostration
of mind and body, and asks:

"Shall I follow you with my heart or my feet?"

Courtenay then fired off his pistols defiantly,
and when he was told of the probable pursuit,
cried:

"Let them come. I'll try my arm."

Bossenden Wood was pleasant, that June
morning. The sunshine overhead turned the
transparent young leaves to a golden green.
The thrushes were singing near their nests, the
blackbirds piping to their fledglings. The
sunlight glowed softly on the moss under the
dappled hazel stems and the spreading roots
of the great beech-trees, against whose clear
shapely trunks these fanatics were standing.
Round the wild-eyed man with the long flowing
hair, watchful as robbers, they waited for the
first gleam of scarlet among the bushes.
Courtenay was to raise the war-cry of Gideon,
and bear down irresistibly on the persecutors of
the true prophet. Hitherto he had been
victorious over all difficulties. He had won food
for them. He had struck the constable dead.
He had defied the magistrates. Soon the
heavens would open, and a voice would be
heard proclaiming the prophet. Then the
rampant lion would pass on through England,
and all would bow to the saviour of the poor.
On every sunbeam that spread through the
wood, lighting up the pathways of blue hyacinths
and the mossy tracks sprinkled with violets,
there were coming angels, Sir William told
them, to cheer and to defend them.

It was a strange contrast, that beautiful
wood, echoing with the innocent voices of the
birds, and its new inmates those frenzied
men shouting hymns, brandishing bludgeons,
and screaming fanatic prophecies of wrath
and doom. Far away across the fields of hops,
rank and luxuriant with their spring growth,
there came, perhaps, the merry cadence of
the Canterbury bells, pealing out for some gay
holiday, and careless and mocking at the coming
prophet.

A detachment of soldiers, their muskets on
their shoulders, are on the march to Bossenden
in careless order, hardly thinking it will be
worth while even to fix bayonets to apprehend
a madman and some twenty or thirty labourers
armed with bludgeons. Their commander,
Lieutenant Bennett, his sash across his breast,
is speaking with the sergeant, and planning how
the capture shall be made when they enter the
wood. His thoughts alternate between Courtenay
and the county ball the night before.

In the mean time, Courtenay has told Wills
that the men must be well generalled. He had
previously assured some of his followers that,
though they might not believe it, the white
horse he led was the horse mentioned in the
Revelations. His wretchedly ignorant followers
were prepared to believe anything now. After
he shot poor Mears, he had cried out:

"Though I have killed his body, I have saved
his soul!"

He raves (all cunning thrown aside), and the
free current of his madness now breaks forth.
His eyes roll, he waves his sword to heaven, he
Ilings up his arms, he proclaims aloud his
Divinity. It has been long enough conealed
Shaking off the great Spanish cloak that he had
ordered to be thrown over him, to hide his pistols
when any stranger passed, he shouts: