“One shall be taken, the other left.”
It was old Choris who said it. A little murmur of assent went up from the circle, bareheaded now, like Christopher. He looked up with fierce, unspoken dissent to their meek acceptance of this cruel thing, and then replacing the coat very gently, stood up.
“Has anyone gone to Ann Barty?” he asked quietly.
Someone had gone, it appeared. Someone else had gone for a doctor. Christopher ordered them to carry the little form into the waiting-room, where it was laid on the table. Someone fetched a flag from the office and laid it over the boy.
Without direct orders all work in the mill had 361 ceased, little knots of men had gathered in the yard and there was a half-suppressed unanimous murmur from two hundred throats when a group of men came out of the room with the shattered window, carrying the still conscious form of the author of the outrage. It rose and fell and rose again threateningly. Christopher came out of the waiting-room and at sight of him it fell again.
“They must go back to work,” he said to the head foreman, who waited uneasily. “They can do nothing, and if we stop work there will be trouble.”
“Where are you going, sir?”
The foreman ventured this much on sheer necessity.
“To Ann Barty.”
“What shall I say to them?” Again he eyed the men uneasily.