She dragged him back to the window, and so evident was the struggle with which she controlled herself, so intense her agonized excitement, that he dared not leave her.
"Look!" she cried. "Look! See the them crowd now!"
The first horrified rush away from the instrument of death was followed by the usual surging multitude.
From every direction people gathered thickly in astonishing numbers, hustling and pushing about the quiet form upon the ground; held so flat between iron rails and iron wheels, so great a weight on so small a body! The car, still empty, rose like an island from the pushing sea of heads. Men and women cried excited directions. They tried with swarming impotent hands to lift the huge mass of wood and iron off the small broken thing beneath it, so small that it did not raise the crushing weight from the ground.
A whole line of excited men seized the side rail and strove to lift the car by it, lifting only the rail.
The crowd grew momently, women weeping, children struggling to see, men pushing each other, policemen's helmets rising among them. And still the great car stood there, on the body of the child.
"Is there no means of lifting these monsters?" she demanded. "After they have done it, can't they even get off."
He moistened his lips to answer.
"There is a jacking crew," he said. "They will be here presently."
"Presently!" she cried. "Presently! Couldn't these monsters use their own power to lift themselves somehow? not even that?"