The fun
growing fast and furious, they next began to hustle and stone
prominent citizens known to be friendly to the courts, as well as such
as objected to having their houses entered and gutted. When their
victims broke away from them and fled, being too drunk to overtake
them it was quite natural that they should fire their muskets after
them, and if the bullets did not generally hit their marks it was
merely because the hands of the marksmen were as unsteady as their
legs. Some of the most prominent citizens of Great Barrington passed
the day hid in outhouses and garrets, while others, mounted on fleet
steeds, escaped amid a peltering of bullets, and took refuge in
neighboring towns, some going as far as Pittsfield before they halted.
Squire Sedgwick chanced to be at Great Barrington, that day, at the
house of his brother-in-law, Justice Dwight. As a lawyer, an
aristocrat, and a member of the detested State Senate, he not only
shared the general unpopularity of those classes, but as prosecuting
attorney for the county, was in particularly evil odor with the lewd
fellows of the baser sort, who were to-day on the rampage. When the
uproar was at its height, word got around that he was in town, and
immediately the mob dropped whatever was in hand, and rushed in a body
toward Dwight's house.
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