on their return to the company was announced as a miracle.
On Wednesday evening they stopped at the farm house of Bossenden, where the farmer finding that his men were seduced by the impostor from their duty, sent for constables to have them apprehended. Two brothers, named Mears, and another man, accordingly went next morning, but on their approach Thoms shot one of the brothers dead with a pistol, and aimed a blow at the other with a dagger, whereupon the two survivers fled.
At an early hour he was abroad with his followers, to the number of about forty. He undertook to administer the sacrament, in bread and water, to the deluded men who followed him. He told them, on this occasion, as he did on many others, that there was great oppression in the land, and throughout the world; but that if they would follow him, he would lead them on to glory. He told them he had come to earth on a cloud, and that on a cloud he should some day be removed from them; that neither bullets nor weapons could injure him or them, if they had but faith in him as their Saviour; and that if ten thousand soldiers came against them, they would either turn to their side, or fall dead at his command. At the end of this harangue, Alexander Foad, whose jaw was afterwards shot off by the military, knelt down at his feet and worshipped him; so did another man of the name of Brankford. Foad then asked Thoms whether he should follow him in the body, or go home and follow him in heart; to which he replied, "Follow me in the body." Foad then sprang on his feet, in an ecstasy of joy, and with a voice of great exultation, exclaimed, "O, be joyful! O, be joyful! The Saviour has accepted me. Go on, go on; till I drop, I'll follow thee!" Brankford also was accepted as a follower, and exhibited the same enthusiastic fervor. At this time his denunciations
