f into trouble.'

'I've heard almost every single word of that,' whispered Robert, 'in
Hyde Park last Sunday!'

'Let us strike for more bread and onions and beer, and a longer mid-day
rest,' the speaker went on. 'You are tired, you are hungry, you are
thirsty. You are poor, your wives and children are pining for food. The
barns of the rich are full to bursting with the corn we want, the corn
our labour has grown. To the granaries!'

'To the granaries!' cried half the crowd; but another voice shouted
clear above the tumult, 'To Pharaoh! To the King! Let's present a
petition to the King! He will listen to the voice of the oppressed!'

For a moment the crowd swayed one way and another--first towards the
granaries and then towards the palace. Then, with a rush like that of an
imprisoned torrent suddenly set free, it surged along the street towards
the palace, and the children were carried with it. Anthea found it
difficult to keep the Psammead from being squeezed very uncomfortably.

The crowd swept through the streets of dull-looking houses with few
windows, very high up, across the market where people were not buying
but exchanging goods. In a momentary pause Robert saw a basket of onions
exchanged for a hair comb and five fish for a string of beads. The
people in the market seemed better off than those in the crowd; they
had finer clothes, and more of them. They were the kind of people who,
nowadays, would have lived at Brixton or Brockley.

'What's the trouble now?' a languid, large-eyed lady in a crimped,
half-transparent linen dress, with her black hair very much braided and
puffed out, asked of a date-seller.

'Oh, the working-men--discontented as usual,' the man answered. 'Listen
to them. Anyone would think it mattered whether they had a little more
or less to eat. Dregs of society!' said the date-seller.

'Scum!' said the lady.

'And I've heard THAT before, too,' said Robert.

At that moment the voice of the crowd changed, from anger to doubt, from
doubt to fear. There were other voices shouting; they shouted defiance
and menace, and they came nearer very quickly. There was the rattle of
wheels and the pounding of hoofs. A voice shouted, 'Guards!'

'The Guards! The Guards!' shouted another voice, and the crowd of
workmen took up the cry. 'The Guards! Pharaoh's Guards!' And swaying a
little once more, the crowd hung for a moment as it were balanced. Then
as the trampling hoofs came nearer the workmen fle