"Lee or not, we're goin' to smash th' thing, whatever it is. We're noan particular about th' lee. We'll mak' th' thing safe first, an' then settle about th' lee."
Murdoch thrust his hands in his pockets and eyed them with his first approach to his usual sang-froid.
"It's where you won't find it," he said. "I've made sure of that."
It was a mad speech to have made, but he had lost self-control and balance. He was too terribly conscious of Rachel Ffrench's perilous nearness to be in the mood to weigh his words. He saw his mistake in a second. There was a shout and a surging movement of the mob toward him, and Rachel Ffrench, with an indescribable swiftness, had thrown herself before him and was struck by a stone which came whizzing through the air.
She staggered under the stroke but stood upright in a breadth's time.
"My God!" Murdoch cried out. "They have struck you. They have struck you!"
He was half mad with his anguish and horror. The sight of the little stream of blood which trickled from her temple turned him sick with rage.
"You devils!" he raved, "do you see what you have done?"
But the play was over. Before he had finished his outcry there was a shout of "th' coppers! th' coppers!" and a rush and skurry and tumble of undignified retreat. The police force with a band of anti-strikers behind them had appeared upon the scene in the full glory of the uniform of the corporation, and such was the result of habit and the majesty of the law that those who were not taken into custody incontinently took to their heels and scattered in every direction, uttering curses loud and deep, since they were not yet prepared to resist an attack more formally.
In half an hour the trampled grass and flower-beds and broken shrubs were the only signs of the tumult. Mr. Ffrench was walking up and down the dreary room in as nervous a condition as ever.