a child s want of sympathetic imagination, staring with dilated eyes at
a dusty something that lay black and still, ground and crushed under
the rolling wheels. Let us go back! he shouted, and began turning the
pony round. We cannot cross this hell, he said and they went back a
hundred yards the way they had come, until the fighting crowd was
hidden. As they passed the bend in the lane my brother saw the face of
the dying man in the ditch under the privet, deadly white and drawn,
and shining with perspiration. The two women sat silent, crouching in
their seat and shivering.
Then beyond the bend my brother stopped again. Miss Elphinstone was
white and pale, and her sister-in-law sat weeping, too wretched even to
call upon George. My brother was horrified and perplexed. So soon as
they had retreated he realised how urgent and unavoidable it was to
attempt this crossing. He turned to Miss Elphinstone, suddenly
resolute.
We must go that way, he said, and led the pony round again.
For the second time that day this girl proved her quality. To force
their way into the torrent of people, my brother plunged into the
traffic and held back a cab horse, while she drove the pony across its
head. A waggon locked wheels for a moment and ripped a long splinter
from the chaise. In another moment they were caught and swept forward
by the stream. My brother, with the cabman s whip marks red across his
face and hands, scrambled into the chaise and took the reins from her.
Point the revolver at the man behind, he said, giving it to her, if
he presses us too hard. No! point it at his horse.
Then he began to look out for a chance of edging to the right across
the road. But once in the stream he seemed to lose volition, to become
a part of that dusty rout. They swept through Chipping Barnet with the
torrent; they were nearly a mile beyond the centre of the town before
they had fought across to the opposite side of the way. It was din and
confusion indescribable; but in and beyond the town the road forks
repeatedly, and this to some extent relieved the stress.
They struck eastward through Hadley, and there on either side of the
road, and at another place farther on they came upon a great multitude
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