ers
to desist. There had been several fights, in all of which the
strike-breakers had been beaten. Derek himself had fought three times.
In the afternoon the police had come, and the laborers had rushed with
Derek and Sheila, who had joined them, into a barn at Marrow Farm,
barred it, and thrown mangolds at the police, when they tried to force
an entrance. One by one the laborers had slipped away by a rope out of a
ventilation-hole high up at the back, and they had just got Sheila down
when the police appeared on that side, too. Derek, who had stayed to the
last, covering their escape with mangolds, had jumped down twenty feet
when he saw them taking Sheila, and, pitching forward, hit his head
against a grindstone. Then, just as they were marching Sheila and two
of the laborers away, Tod had arrived and had fallen in alongside the
policemen--he and the dog. It was then she had seen that look on his
face.

Felix, who had never beheld his big brother in Berserk mood, could offer
no consolation; nor had he the heart to adorn the tale, and inflict on
this poor woman his reflection: 'This, you see, is what comes of the
ferment you have fostered. This is the reward of violence!' He longed,
rather, to comfort her; she seemed so lonely and, in spite of all her
stoicism, so distraught and sad. His heart went out, too, to Tod. How
would he himself have felt, walking by the side of policemen whose arms
were twisted in Nedda's! But so mixed are the minds of men that at this
very moment there was born within him the germ of a real revolt against
the entry of his little daughter into this family of hotheads. It
was more now than mere soreness and jealousy; it was fear of a danger
hitherto but sniffed at, but now only too sharply savored.

When she left him to go up-stairs, Felix stayed consulting the dark
night. As ever, in hours of ebbed vitality, the shapes of fear and doubt
grew clearer and more positive; they loomed huge out there among
the apple-trees, where the drip-drip of the rain made music. But his
thoughts were still nebulous, not amounting to resolve. It was no moment
for resolves--with the boy lying up there between the tides of chance;
and goodness knew what happening to Tod and Sheila. The air grew
sharper; he withdrew to the hearth, where a wood fire still burned,
gray ash, red glow, scent oozing from it. And while he crouched there,
blowing it with bellows, he heard soft footsteps, and saw Nedda standing
behind him