"What a view!" McTaggart sighed.
Below in the valley he saw grey roofs, like stones carelessly pitched downhill, tiny fields and a gleam of blue where the river glided in and out.
Now they were hovering like a bird over the village; then, as the road, steep and winding, swept them down, the cottages rose all about them. They passed a church, a school, a bridge, and slackened speed.
"Here we are. It's through that gate on the right, sir," the chauffeur pointed down the road.
They could see a field packed with people about an erection of wooden planks, and as the engine ceased to throb McTaggart caught another sound—once heard, never forgotten—the snarling note of an angry crowd.
"Up to mischief," said the chauffeur.
But McTaggart was out, cutting along as hard as his long legs would go, a sick fear in his heart. Where was Jill in this turmoil?
He sprang through a torn gap in the hedge and pushed his way determinedly through the loose fringe of the crowd that surged round the high platform. All around him people were shouting; the mob moved in little rushes, swaying forward, beaten back from the moving centre of disturbance.
Then above the angry hum a shriek rose, shrill with fear. McTaggart saw, for a moment, a figure raised above the heads. A young girl with a bleeding face, hair streaming on the breeze, one shoulder bare and white where the tattered dress had fallen away.
"Down her!" "Duck her!" "To the river..." Wild cries in uncouth Welsh.