as they approached the monstrous, uncouth line of
bottle-shaped buildings which marked the smelting-works of Croxley,
their long, writhing snake of dust was headed off by another but longer
one which wound across their path. The main road into which their own
opened was filled by the rushing current of traps. The Wilson
contingent halted until the others should get past. The iron-men
cheered and groaned, according to their humour, as they whirled past
their antagonist. Rough chaff flew back and forwards like iron nuts and
splinters of coal. "Brought him up, then!" "Got t' hearse for to fetch
him back?" "Where's t' owd K-legs?" "Mon, mon, have thy photograph
took--'twill mind thee of what thou used to look!" "He fight?--he's
nowt but a half-baked doctor!" "Happen he'll doctor thy Croxley
Champion afore he's through wi't."

So they flashed at each other as the one side waited and the other
passed. Then there came a rolling murmur swelling into a shout, and a
great brake with four horses came clattering along, all streaming with
salmon-pink ribbons. The driver wore a white hat with pink rosette, and
beside him, on the high seat, were a man and a woman-she with her arm
round his waist. Montgomery had one glimpse of them as they flashed
past; he with a furry cap drawn low over his brow, a great frieze coat
and a pink comforter round his throat; she brazen, red-headed,
bright-coloured, laughing excitedly. The Master, for it was he, turned
as he passed, gazed hard at Montgomery, and gave him a menacing,
gap-toothed grin. It was a hard, wicked face, blue-jowled and craggy,
with long, obstinate cheeks and inexorable eyes. The brake behind was
full of patrons of the sport-flushed iron-foremen, heads of departments,
managers. One was drinking from a metal flask, and raised it to
Montgomery as he passed; and then the crowd thinned, and the Wilson
cortege with their dragoons swept in at the rear of the others.

The road led away from Croxley, between curving green hills, gashed and
polluted by the searchers for coal and iron. The whole country had been
gutted, and vast piles of refuse and mountains of slag suggested the
mighty chambers which the labour of man had burrowed beneath. On the
left the road curved up to where a huge building, roofless and
dismantled, stood crumbling and forlorn, with the light shining through
the windowless squares.

"That's the old Arrowsmith's factory. That's where the fight is to