The wind had blown the cape back to her shoulders, and the folds of black veil banding her head slipped down, restraining no longer the ripples of hair curling above her temples. Leaning over the dashboard, one hand clutching the collar of Harlberg's overcoat as she talked rapidly to him, she resembled some gilt-headed figure carved at the prow of a vessel, always first to front tempests.
Just then a solid column of policemen charged the strikers, forcing them back almost upon the pile of rails near the foremost car, and following the line of lifted and revolving clubs, Mr. Cathcart and his superintendent, Hazleton appeared. Hisses, jeers, oaths, and a prolonged howl greeted them, amid which paving stones smote the heavy clubs that swung right and left like flails, and Harlberg sprang to the iron controller, leaped thence to the roof of the car, and shouted his orders to the strikers on the ground. Wounded, bleeding men were trampled by the swaying mass as it surged forward, staggered back, panting, cursing, hooting; then, in quick succession, three shots rang out.
A moment later Mrs. Dane laid Harlberg's pistol on top of the controller stand, and, as she stepped down from the platform to make her way home, something hurtled through the air and struck between the spot where Mr. Cathcart stood and the iron dashboard of the car. In the blinding glare of the explosion two strikers and a policeman were seen to fall, and when the roar and sharp shivering of crashed windows ended, a sudden hush fell upon the multitude.
Father Temple had slowly forced his way along the outer edge of the quivering throng and reached the centre of the square, where in summer a fountain babbled. Some one behind grasped his cassock.
"You are a priest? For the love of God, come to a dying man! Come back."
Death had sounded a temporary truce, and for some moments only whispers passed trembling lips, but the strikers still guarded the rails. Mr. Cathcart wiped off the dust thrown into his face by the explosion, bared his grey head, and lifted his hand:
"Men, don't you think you have worked mischief enough for one night? Eight dead, and only God knows how many wounded! That is an ugly bill the law will surely make you pay. You heard those three shots fired into the air? It was a signal for the armory; the troops are now coming. Who will feed your babies when you are bayonetted?"
A mounted policeman spurred his horse close to the president.
"The soldiers are hurrying down."
The leaders recognized the futility of continued resistance, and, as they slowly fell back from the track the police were in undisputed control of the cars when the hurrying line of soldiers reached the square.