an a fair chance'. This little bodyguard
closed round the van as it began to move slowly downhill, but they were
not sufficiently numerous to protect it from the crowd, which, not
being satisfied with the rate at which the van was proceeding, began to
shout to each other to 'Run it away!' 'Take the brake off!' and several
savage rushes were made with the intention of putting these suggestions
into execution.

Some of the defenders were hampered with their bicycles, but they
resisted as well as they were able, and succeeded in keeping the crowd
off until the foot of the hill was reached, and then someone threw the
first stone, which by a strange chance happened to strike one of the
cyclists whose head was already bandaged--it was the same man who had
been hit on the Sunday. This stone was soon followed by others, and
the man on the platform was the next to be struck. He got it right on
the mouth, and as he put up his handkerchief to staunch the blood
another struck him on the forehead just above the temple, and he
dropped forward on his face on to the platform as if he had been shot.

As the speed of the vehicle increased, a regular hail of stones fell
upon the roof and against the sides of the van and whizzed past the
retreating cyclists, while the crowd followed close behind, cheering,
shrieking out volleys of obscene curses, and howling like wolves.

'We'll give the b--rs Socialism!' shouted Crass, who was literally
foaming at the mouth.

'We'll teach 'em to come 'ere trying to undermined our bloody
morality,' howled Dick Wantley as he hurled a lump of granite that he
had torn up from the macadamized road at one of the cyclists.

They ran on after the van until it was out of range, and then they
bethought themselves of the local Socialists; but they were nowhere to
be seen; they had prudently withdrawn as soon as the van had got fairly
under way, and the victory being complete, the upholders of the present
system returned to the piece of waste ground on the top of the hill,
where a gentleman in a silk hat and frockcoat stood up on a little
hillock and made a speech. He said nothing about the Distress
Committee or the Soup Kitchen or the children who went to school
without proper clothes or food, and made no reference to what was to be
done next winter, when nearly everybody would be out of work. These
were matters he and they were evidently not at all interested in. But
he said a good deal about the Glorious