He was turning away. A cheer was rising—a belated cheer, because his words had set them all to thinking and to observing. From the left of the crowd, a dozen yards away from the platform, came a stone heavily rather than swiftly flung, as from an impeded hand. In full view of all it curved across the front of the platform and struck Victor Dorn full in the side of the head.
He threw up his hands.
"Boys—remember!" he shouted with a terrible energy—then, he staggered forward and fell from the platform into the crowd.
The stone was a signal. As it flew, into the crowd from every direction the Beech Hollow gangs tore their way, yelling and cursing and striking out right and left—trampling children, knocking down women, pouring out the foulest insults. The street lamps all round Market Square went out, the torches on the platform were torn down and extinguished. And in a dimness almost pitch dark a riot that involved that whole mass of people raged hideously. Yells and screams and groans, the shrieks of women, the piteous appeals of children—benches torn up for weapons—mad slashing about—snarls and singings of pain-stricken groups—then police whistles, revolvers fired in the air, and the quick, regular tramp of disciplined forces. The police—strangely ready, strangely inactive until the mischief had all been done entered the square from the north and, forming a double line across it from east to west, swept it slowly clean. The fighting ended as abruptly as it had begun. Twenty minutes after the flight of that stone, the square was empty save a group of perhaps fifty men and women formed about Victor Dorn's body in the shelter of the platform.
Selma Gordon was holding his head. Jane Hastings and Ellen Clearwater were kneeling beside him, and Jane was wiping his face with a handkerchief wet with whisky from the flask of the man who had escorted them there.
"He is only stunned," said Selma. "I can feel the beat of his blood. He is only stunned."
A doctor came, got down on his knees, made a rapid examination with expert hands. As he felt, one of the relighted torches suddenly lit up Victor's face and the faces of those bending over him.
"He is only stunned, Doctor," said Selma.
"I think so," replied the doctor.
"We left our carriage in the side street just over there," said Jane Hastings. "It will take him to the hospital."