ong dear friends and sympathisers. Listen to
me for a moment.'

It was the moment that a passing char-a-banc chose to strike into The
Song. The effect was instantaneous. Bat, Ollyett, and I, who by divers
roads have learned the psychology of crowds, retreated towards the
tavern door. Woodhouse, the newspaper proprietor, anxious, I presume, to
keep touch with the public, dived into the thick of it. Every one else
told the Society to go away at once. When the lady at the harmonium (I
began to understand why it is sometimes necessary to kill women) pointed
at the stencilled park pillars and called them 'the cromlechs of our
common faith,' there was a snarl and a rush. The police-sergeant checked
it, but advised the Society to keep on going. The Society withdrew into
the brake fighting, as it were, a rear-guard action of oratory up each
step. The collapsed harmonium was hauled in last, and with the perfect
unreason of crowds, they cheered it loudly, till the chauffeur slipped
in his clutch and sped away. Then the crowd broke up, congratulating all
concerned except the sexton, who was held to have disgraced his office
by having sworn at ladies. We strolled across the green towards
Woodhouse, who was talking to the police-sergeant near the park-gates.
We were not twenty yards from him when we saw Sir Thomas Ingell emerge
from the lodge and rush furiously at Woodhouse with an uplifted stick,
at the same time shrieking: 'I'll teach you to laugh, you--' but Ollyett
has the record of the language. By the time we reached them, Sir Thomas
was on the ground; Woodhouse, very white, held the walking-stick and was
saying to the sergeant:

'I give this person in charge for assault.'

'But, good Lord!' said the sergeant, whiter than Woodhouse. 'It's Sir
Thomas.'

'Whoever it is, it isn't fit to be at large,' said Woodhouse. The crowd
suspecting something wrong began to reassemble, and all the English
horror of a row in public moved us, headed by the sergeant, inside the
lodge. We shut both park-gates and lodge-door.

'You saw the assault, sergeant,' Woodhouse went on. 'You can testify I
used no more force than was necessary to protect myself. You can testify
that I have not even damaged this person's property. (Here! take your
stick, you!) You heard the filthy language he used.'

'I--I can't say I did,' the sergeant stammered.

'Oh, but _we_ did!' said Ollyett, and repeated it, to the apron-veiled
horror of the lodge-keeper's wif