CHAPTER VII
FLIGHT
It was a dumb and sullen crowd that Dick Green faced that night in the great barn on the slope of High Shale.
A rough platform had been erected at one end of the place and this, with the deal table and lamp and one or two chairs, was all that went to the furnishing of his assembly-room. The men stood in a close crowd like herded cattle, and the atmosphere of the place was heavy with the reek of humanity and coarse tobacco-smoke. There was a door at each end, but the night was still and dark and there was little air beyond the vague chill of a creeping sea-mist.
Dick, entering at the door at the platform end of the building instead of passing straight up through the crowd as was his custom, was aware of a curious influence at work from the first moment—an influence adverse if not directly hostile that reached him he knew not how. He heard a vague murmur as Juliet and Saltash followed him, and sharply he turned and drew Juliet to his side. In that instant he realized that she was the only woman in the place.
He faced the crowd, his hand upon her arm. "Well, men," he said, his words clean-cut and ready, "so you've left your wives behind, have you? I on the contrary have brought mine, and she has promised to give you a song."
The mutter died. Some youths at the back started applause, which spread, though somewhat half-heartedly, through the crowd, and for a space the ugly feeling died down.
"We'll get to business," said Dick, and took out his banjo.
The concert began, Ashcott came up on to the platform and under cover of
Dick's jangling ragtime spoke in a low voice and urgently to Saltash.
The latter heard him with a laugh and a careless grimace, but a little later he leaned towards Juliet who sat behind the table and touched her unobtrusively. She looked round at him almost with reluctance, and he whispered to her in rapid French.