in hand, and swept them,
bewildered as they were, and ignorant of the map, clear out of the
sacred street again? And don't you know that upon that night every
year all lights are turned out for half an hour while we sing the
Notting Hill anthem in the darkness? Hark! there it begins."

Through the night came a crash of drums, and then a strong swell of
human voices--

"When the world was in the balance, there was night on Notting Hill,
(There was night on Notting Hill): it was nobler than the day;
On the cities where the lights are and the firesides glow,
From the seas and from the deserts came the thing we did not know,
Came the darkness, came the darkness, came the darkness on the foe,
And the old guard of God turned to bay.
For the old guard of God turns to bay, turns to bay,
And the stars fall down before it ere its banners fall to-day:
For when armies were around us as a howling and a horde,
When falling was the citadel and broken was the sword,
The darkness came upon them like the Dragon of the Lord,
When the old guard of God turned to bay."

The voices were just uplifting themselves in a second verse when they
were stopped by a scurry and a yell. Barker had bounded into the
street with a cry of "South Kensington!" and a drawn dagger. In less
time than a man could blink, the whole packed street was full of
curses and struggling. Barker was flung back against the shop-front,
but used the second only to draw his sword as well as his dagger, and
calling out, "This is not the first time I've come through the thick
of you," flung himself again into the press. It was evident that he
had drawn blood at last, for a more violent outcry arose, and many
other knives and swords were discernible in the faint light. Barker,
after having wounded more than one man, seemed on the point of being
flung back again, when Buck suddenly stepped out into the street. He
had no weapon, for he affected rather the peaceful magnificence of the
great burgher, than the pugnacious dandyism which had replaced the old
sombre dandyism in Barker. But with a blow of his clenched fist he
broke the pane of the next shop, which was the old curiosity shop,
and, plunging in his hand, snatched a kind of Japanese scimitar, and
calling out, "Kensington! Kensington!" rushed to Barker's assistance.

Barker's sword was broken, but he was laying about him with his
dagger. Just as Buck ran up, a man of Notting Hill struck Barker down,