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It appeared that Copthorne was not the only place where men went hungry. In foreign parts they were hungry too, for the news came dimly and derivatively through folk who had met folk who had read a newspaper that there were riots all up and down England, that bakers' shops had been looted by angry mobs and that in a northern city loaves dipped in blood had been paraded on pikes through the streets. The folk of the Surrey borders were not given to riot—they suffered like beasts without much complaint beyond a little moaning and growling, and when they could bear no more lay down to die. But some of them were comforted by the thought of these riots, undertaken by more daring spirits than they—"Maybe 'twill all sarve to bring the prices down," would be said over and over again in the bar of the Horse and Cart. While some who were more knowledgeable than their neighbours said: "There's a tax on bread. If the Queen cud only täake off the tax on bread, we'd git a quarten loaf fur a shillun, maybe."