Page 794 - middlemarch

Riding along the lanes by Frick in this mood, and slacken-
ing his pace while he reflected whether he should venture
to go round by Lowick Parsonage to call on Mary, he could
see over the hedges from one field to another. Suddenly
a noise roused his attention, and on the far side of a field
on his left hand he could see six or seven men in smock-
frocks with hay-forks in their hands making an offensive
approach towards the four railway agents who were facing
them, while Caleb Garth and his assistant were hastening
across the field to join the threatened group. Fred, delayed a
few moments by having to find the gate, could not gallop up
to the spot before the party in smock-frocks, whose work of
turning the hay had not been too pressing after swallowing
their mid-day beer, were driving the men in coats before
them with their hay-forks; while Caleb Garth’s assistant,
a lad of seventeen, who had snatched up the spirit-level at
Caleb’s order, had been knocked down and seemed to be
lying helpless. The coated men had the advantage as run-
ners, and Fred covered their retreat by getting in front of
the smock-frocks and charging them suddenly enough to
throw their chase into confusion. ‘What do you confounded
fools mean?’ shouted Fred, pursuing the divided group in a
zigzag, and cutting right and left with his whip. ‘I’ll swear to
every one of you before the magistrate. You’ve knocked the
lad down and killed him, for what I know. You’ll every one
of you be hanged at the next assizes, if you don’t mind,’ said
Fred, who afterwards laughed heartily as he remembered
his own phrases.
The laborers had been driven through the gate-way into