inside the Inclosure!

Mr. Tapster tried in vain to see what was going on inside the railings,
but everything beyond the brightly lighted road was wrapped in gray
darkness. Some one suddenly held up high a flaming torch, and the
watcher at the window saw that the shadowy crowd which had managed to
force its way into the Park hung together, like bees swarming, on the
farther lawn through which flowed the Serpentine. With the gleaming of
the yellow, wavering light there had fallen a sudden hush and silence,
and Mr. Tapster wondered uneasily what those people were doing there,
and what it was they were pressing forward so eagerly to see.

[Illustration: "HE ... TURNED TO SEE HIS HALL INVADED BY A STRANGE AND
SINISTER QUARTET"]

Then he realized that it must have been a fight, after all, for now the
crowd was parting in two, and down the lane so formed Mr. Tapster saw
coming toward the gate, and so in a sense toward himself, a rather
pitiful little procession. Some one had evidently been injured, and that
seriously; for four men, bearing a sheep-hurdle on which lay a huddled
mass, were walking slowly toward the gate, and he heard distinctly the
gruffly uttered words: "Stand back, please--back, there! We're going
across the road." The now large crowd suddenly swayed forward; indeed,
to Mr. Tapster's astonished eyes, they seemed to be actually making a
rush for his house, and a moment later they were pressing around his
area-railings.

Looking down on the upturned faces below him, Mr. Tapster was very glad
that a stout pane of glass stood between himself and the
sinister-looking men and women who seemed to be staring up at him, or
rather at his windows, with faces full of cruel, wolfish curiosity. He
let the blind fall to gently. His interest in the vulgar, sordid scene
had suddenly died down; the drama was now over; in a moment the crowd
would disperse, the human vermin (but Mr. Tapster would never have used,
even to himself, so coarse an expression) would be on their way back to
their burrows. But before he had even time to rearrange the curtains in
their right folds, there came a sudden loud, persistent knocking at his
front door.

Mr. Tapster turned around sharply, feeling justly incensed. Of course,
he knew what it was--some good-for-nothing urchin finding a vent for his
excited feelings. His parlor-maid, who was never in any hurry to open
the door,--she had once kept him waiting ten minutes when he had
forgotten h