The next moment,
however, the soldier himself was dead--dead from a pistol-shot fired
by Caillaud, who was instantly seized, handed over to a guard, and
marched off with a score of others to Manchester jail. A remnant
only of the Blanketeers escaped from Stockport, and a smaller remnant
got to Macclesfield. There there was no shelter for them, and many
of them lay in the streets all night. When the morning dawned only
twenty went on into Staffordshire, and these shortly afterwards
separated, and wandered back to Manchester. The sword of Gideon was,
alas! not the sword of the Lord, and aching hearts in that bitter
March weather felt that there was something worse than the cold to be
borne at they struggled homewards. Others, amongst whom was our
Methodist orator, were not discouraged. It is a poor religion which
makes no provision for disaster, and even for apparently final
failure. The test of faith is its power under defeat, and these
silly God-fearing souls argued to themselves that their Master's time
was not their time; that perhaps they were being punished for their
sins, and that when it pleased Him they would triumph. Essentially
right they were, right in every particular, excepting, perhaps, that
it was not for their own sins that this sore visitation came upon
them.
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