usly singing
some song or other. They were singing discordantly, arduously, and with
great effort, evidently not because they wished to sing, but because
they wanted to show they were drunk and on a spree. One, a tall,
fair-haired lad in a clean blue coat, was standing over the others. His
face with its fine straight nose would have been handsome had it not
been for his thin, compressed, twitching lips and dull, gloomy, fixed
eyes. Evidently possessed by some idea, he stood over those who were
singing, and solemnly and jerkily flourished above their heads his white
arm with the sleeve turned up to the elbow, trying unnaturally to spread
out his dirty fingers. The sleeve of his coat kept slipping down and he
always carefully rolled it up again with his left hand, as if it were
most important that the sinewy white arm he was flourishing should be
bare. In the midst of the song cries were heard, and fighting and blows
in the passage and porch. The tall lad waved his arm.

"Stop it!" he exclaimed peremptorily. "There's a fight, lads!" And,
still rolling up his sleeve, he went out to the porch.

The factory hands followed him. These men, who under the leadership of
the tall lad were drinking in the dramshop that morning, had brought the
publican some skins from the factory and for this had had drink served
them. The blacksmiths from a neighboring smithy, hearing the sounds of
revelry in the tavern and supposing it to have been broken into, wished
to force their way in too and a fight in the porch had resulted.

The publican was fighting one of the smiths at the door, and when the
workmen came out the smith, wrenching himself free from the tavern
keeper, fell face downward on the pavement.

Another smith tried to enter the doorway, pressing against the publican
with his chest.

The lad with the turned-up sleeve gave the smith a blow in the face and
cried wildly: "They're fighting us, lads!"

At that moment the first smith got up and, scratching his bruised
face to make it bleed, shouted in a tearful voice: "Police! Murder!...
They've killed a man, lads!"

"Oh, gracious me, a man beaten to death--killed!..." screamed a woman
coming out of a gate close by.

A crowd gathered round the bloodstained smith.

"Haven't you robbed people enough--taking their last shirts?" said a
voice addressing the publican. "What have you killed a man for, you
thief?"

The tall lad, standing in the porch, turned his bleared eyes from the