He was known by sight to many in the crowd. By them the knowledge of who he was was instantly communicated to all the rest. He was not greeted with any tumult; they were too much in earnest to be noisy. But, with one accord, they cursed him, and their curses, though not loudly uttered, reached him, every one. He stood fronting the array of angry faces, all inclined in his direction.
The three policemen, who kept a clear space in front of the works, and saw that ingress and egress was gained with some sort of ease, hardly seemed to know what to make of him, or of the situation. They glanced at Jones, then at the crowd, then at each other. All the morning the people had been gathering round the gate, the number increasing as the minutes passed. Except that they could not be induced to move away, there had been little to object to in their demeanour until now. As Jones appeared with his wife they formed together into a more compact mass. Another shovelful of dust was thrown by someone at the back with the same dexterity as before, so that it lighted on the man and the woman, partially obscuring them beneath a cloud of dust. That same instant perhaps a dozen stones were thrown, some of which struck both Mr. and Mrs. Jones, the rest rattling against the gate.
It was done so quickly that the police had not a chance to offer interference. They had been instructed to make as little show of authority as possible, to bear as much as could be borne, and, until the last extremity, to do nothing to rouse the rancour of the strikers. In the face of this sudden assault the trio hesitated. Then the one nearest to the gate held his hand up to the crowd, shouting:
'Now, you chaps, none of that! Don't you go making fools of yourselves, or you'll be sorry!' He turned to the Joneses. 'You'd better go back and try to get out some other way. There'll be trouble if you stop here.'
Tom Jones asked him stolidly, gazing with his lack-lustre eyes intently at the crowd:
'Which other way?'
'I don't know--any other way. You can't get this way, that's plain-- they mean mischief. Back you go, before you're sorry.'
The constable endeavoured to hustle the pair back within the gate. But Jones would not have it.
'My child's dying; this is the nearest way to her. I'm going this way.'
The officer persisted in his attempt to persuade him to change his mind.