second glance, and he saw or, perhaps, divined--purpose in
those sinister presences. He looked for the police--the detail of a
dozen bluecoats always assigned to large open-air meetings. Not a
policeman was to be seen.

Victor pushed through the crowd on the platform, advanced to the side
of Colman. "Just a minute, Tom," he said. "I've got to say a word--at
once."

Colman had fallen back; Victor Dorn was facing the crowd--HIS
crowd--the men and women who loved him. In the clear, friendly,
natural voice that marked him for the leader born, the honest leader of
an honest cause, he said:

"My friends, if there is an attempt to disturb this meeting, remember
what we of the League stand for. No violence. Draw away from every
disturber, and wait for the police to act. If the police stop our
meeting, let them--and be ready to go to court and testify to the exact
words of the speaker on which the meeting was stopped. Remember, we
must be more lawful than the law itself!"

He was turning away. A cheer was rising--a belated cheer, because his
words had set them all to thinking and to observing. From the left of
the crowd, a dozen yards away from the platform, came a stone heavily
rather than swiftly flung, as from an impeded hand. In full view of
all it curved across the front of the platform and struck Victor Dorn
full in the side of the head.

He threw up his hands.

"Boys--remember!" he shouted with a terrible energy--then, he staggered
forward and fell from the platform into the crowd.

The stone was a signal. As it flew, into the crowd from every
direction the Beech Hollow gangs tore their way, yelling and cursing
and striking out right and left--trampling children, knocking down
women, pouring out the foulest insults. The street lamps all round
Market Square went out, the torches on the platform were torn down and
extinguished. And in a dimness almost pitch dark a riot that involved
that whole mass of people raged hideously. Yells and screams and
groans, the shrieks of women, the piteous appeals of children--benches
torn up for weapons--mad slashing about--snarls and singings of
pain-stricken groups--then police whistles, revolvers fired in the air,
and the quick, regular tramp of disciplined forces. The
police--strangely ready, strangely inactive until the mischief had all
been done entered the square from the north and, forming a double line
across it from east to west, swept it slowly clean. The