e to the horses; and the
horses with that exquisite forbearance that the horse can show to
the distraught human, did their utmost not to trample on small feet
and outspread hands.

Here and there humanity asserted itself. One policeman--helmetless,
his fair, blond face scratched and bleeding--had in berserkr rage
felled a young woman in the semi-darkness. He bore his senseless
victim into the shelter of some nook or cloister and turned on her
his bull's eye lantern. She was a beautiful creature, in private
life a waitress at a tea shop. Her hat was gone and her hair
streamed over her drooping face and slender shoulders. The policeman
overcome with remorse exclaimed--mentioning the Home Secretary's
name "---- be damned; this ain't the job for a decent man." The
Suffragette revived under his care. He escorted her home, resigned
from the police force, married her and I believe has lived happily
ever afterwards, if he was not killed in the War.

Vivie had struggled for about two hours to reach the precincts of
the House, with or without her banner. Probably without, because she
had freely used its staff as a weapon of defence, and her former
skill in fencing stood her in good stead. But at last she was
gripped by two constables, one of them an oldish man and the other a
plain-clothes policeman, whom several spectators had singled out for
his pleasure in needless brutalities.

These men proceeded to give her "punishment," and involuntarily she
shrieked with mingled agony of pain and outraged sex-revolt. A man
who had paused irresolutely on the kerb of a street refuge came to
her aid. He dealt the grey-haired constable a blow that sent him
reeling and then seized the plain-clothes man by his coat collar. A
struggle ensued which ended in the intervener being flung with such
violence on the kerb stone that he was temporarily stunned.
Presently he found himself being dragged along with his heels
dangling, while Vivie, described in language which my jury of
matrons will not allow me to repeat, was being propelled alongside
him, her clothes nearly torn off her, to some police station where
they were placed under arrest. As soon as they had recovered breath
and complete consciousness, had wiped the blood from cut heads,
noses, and lips, they looked hard at each other. "Thank you _so_
much," said Vivie, "it _was_ good of you." "That's enough," said
her defender, "it wanted the voice to make me sure; but somehow I
thought all al