ouch of nervous excitement
came to fortify him, and he thrust in between two huge slaughterers,
whose clothes reeked of the killing sheds.

"Make way!" he said breathlessly, as they turned on him.

One of them swore and would have shoved him back, and others looked
round at the sound of strife. Lucas put up an uncertain hand to guard
the blow. It, was the hand that held the flute, whose silver keys
flashed in the lights from the shop.

"Ha!" grunted the slaughterer, arrested by that sight. He looked at
Lucas doubtfully, his neat clothes, his general aspect of a superior.
"Who are you?" he demanded.

"Make way!" repeated Lucas.

It seemed to confirm the slaughterer in his suspicion that this was a
personage to be deferred to.

"Hi, there!" he bellowed helpfully. "Give room for his Excellency.
Let his Excellency come through! Don't you see what he's got in his
hand? Make way, will you?"

He bent his huge, unclean shoulder to the business of clearing a
path, and drove through like a snow-plough. Lucas followed along the
lane that he made, and came to the pavement close by the shop.

It was fortunate that events marched sharply from that point, and
forced him to act without thinking. He had some vague notion of
finding the officer in charge of the police and speaking to him. But
before he could move to do so there was a fresh activity of the
people within the bright windows; he saw something that had the look
of a struggle. Voices babbled, and the crowd pressed closer; and
suddenly, from the open doorway, two figures reeled forth, clutching
and thrusting. One was in uniform, the other was a woman. For a
couple of seconds they wrenched and fought, staged before the crowd
on the lighted doorstep; and then the woman broke away and ran
blindly towards the spot where Lucas stood. She had, he saw suddenly,
a child in her arms that cried unceasingly.

The uniformed man who had tried to hold her came plunging after her;
his face was creased in clownish and cruel smiles. Lucas saw the
thing stupidly; his mind prompted him to nothing; he stood where he
was, empty of resource. He was directly in the flying woman's path,
and she rushed at him as to a refuge. He was the sole thing in that
narrow arena of dread which she did not recognize as a figure of
oppression; and she floundered to her knees at his-feet and held
forth the terrified child to him in an agony of appeal. Her tormented
and fearful face was upturned to him; he