tumultuous noise resolved itself now into the disorderly mingling of
many voices, the gride of many wheels, the creaking of waggons, and the
staccato of hoofs. The lane came round sharply not fifty yards from the
crossroads.
Good heavens! cried Mrs. Elphinstone. What is this you are driving
us into?
My brother stopped.
For the main road was a boiling stream of people, a torrent of human
beings rushing northward, one pressing on another. A great bank of
dust, white and luminous in the blaze of the sun, made everything
within twenty feet of the ground grey and indistinct and was
perpetually renewed by the hurrying feet of a dense crowd of horses and
of men and women on foot, and by the wheels of vehicles of every
description.
Way! my brother heard voices crying. Make way!
It was like riding into the smoke of a fire to approach the meeting
point of the lane and road; the crowd roared like a fire, and the dust
was hot and pungent. And, indeed, a little way up the road a villa was
burning and sending rolling masses of black smoke across the road to
add to the confusion.
Two men came past them. Then a dirty woman, carrying a heavy bundle and
weeping. A lost retriever dog, with hanging tongue, circled dubiously
round them, scared and wretched, and fled at my brother s threat.
So much as they could see of the road Londonward between the houses to
the right was a tumultuous stream of dirty, hurrying people, pent in
between the villas on either side; the black heads, the crowded forms,
grew into distinctness as they rushed towards the corner, hurried past,
and merged their individuality again in a receding multitude that was
swallowed up at last in a cloud of dust.
Go on! Go on! cried the voices. Way! Way!
One man s hands pressed on the back of another. My brother stood at the
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