CHAPTER XIV

THE BATTLE OF PALL MALL

“DOGS?” FENTON REPEATED DULLY.

In the draught a paper fluttered out of his hand and went a-sail into a candle flame. Giles’s bony fingers pinched it out amid sparks as it caught fire.

“Since I must be precise of speech with so learned a man,” retorted Giles, always at his worst when he carried bad news, “I will be more plain. I had reference to the mastiffs.”

Fenton started to his feet.

“When? How? Why?”

“Sir, ’twas done last night. —Nay, don’t fall a-cursing that we durst not tell you. There is yet hope.”

“Hope? How?”

“Job ran like mad to fetch Mr. Milligrew, best advised of all for knowledge of dogs and horses; ay, thrice better than your ignorant doctor of physick, who knoweth but how to kill. Well! Mr. Milligrew thinks, in eventual, he may save Thunder and Lion and perchance even Bare-behind, though all are in sore plight. Whiteboy, the terrier, is not permitted abroad at nightfall. But Greedy, as you may judge by his name, is dead.”

Fenton sat down behind the desk, pressing his hands over forehead and periwig.

“How was’t done?”

“Poisoned meat,” replied Giles. “Thus!”

From where he had been concealing it, behind his back, Giles brought a greasy piece of paper. On it lay a piece of good butcher’s meat, raw, bitten-off but untouched, and half-smothered in white powder.

“Arsenic once more,” said Fenton, and stabbed at it with a quill pen. “Come: I could make you a crude test to prove it so. But observe! It is odourless and powdered. There are no (in chymist’s term) crystals of other white poisons: as antimony or strychnine. No! Here’s arsenic.”

Giles folded his arms. “If that be so, what then?”

“Why, it means I have been a fool!”

“Oh, questionless,” murmured Giles, folding his arms. “But—as how?”

“In this,” replied Fenton. He rose from his chair and began to stride up and down, amid the blowing candle flames and the thick heat. “My concern, all of it, is to protect my lady wife from poison. I have searched, studied, made scrutiny of all inside this house. Would any do her harm?”

“Nay,” said Giles, looking down at his shoes. “My lady is much beloved.”

“And therefore am I a fool. Mark it: I have stood on my guard against those inside the house. Not once have I thought to seek outside. To seek a friend—”

“A friend?”

“A pretended friend. Let that friend call out, so that the mastiffs may hear his—or her—voice; let them lick his—or her—hand; thus there will be no noise.”

Giles altered his position. His eyes narrowed, and he stroked his long chin as though he wore a beard.

“’Tis common practice,” he admitted, “among fuglemen or those now called burglars. Yet from this house no thing, nay, not as much as a spoon, hath been stolen away. Wherefore poison the dogs?”

“As thus. Tonight, the mastiffs; they must not be there tonight. Last night they were poisoned. Last night someone was here to do a work as old as Rome; older, for aught I know. In fine: to take a wax or soap mould to the lock of some door, perhaps the front door. A locksmith can grind you the key in one day …”

“And this night?”

“Why, someone (it may be our good Kitty, who was cook and fed all the dogs) will be here for quiet plunder in jewel boxes, as well as to conceal some heavy dose of poison for my wife. Have I read it aright?”

Giles, though for some reason he winced at the name of Kitty, looked back at Fenton and shook his head.

“Nay, sir,” Giles answered quietly. “You are too much caught up with my Lady Fenton. You have not sounded the depth of this matter.”

Fenton did not reply, but merely nodded with a gleam of anticipation in his eye. All the mysterious draughts, which blew the flames, had died away into heavy sluggish air. Fenton returned to his chair.

“Sir Nick, this runs deeper than a matter of poison. ’Tis a matter politic; it may involve the throne itself! Here’s my Lord Shaftesbury, from what I hear, building up from small starts a vast Opposition or Country party, their mark a green ribbon, and in especial with an eye to rousing the mobile party …”

“Call it mob, Giles. Soon all will call it so.”

“Well! And here you, you alone, who would shout ‘God for King Charles!’ amid a hundred of them! Each time they have struck at you, or you at them, you have held them up to mockery and ridicule. Such high-placed men of the Country party must not be so dealt with, lest their power diminish. They must make an end on’t.”

Giles, rather white, backed away from the desk. Fenton raised his head. Giles, startled, saw that his master wore a strange smile, and that there was an anticipatory glitter in his eyes.

“To deal plainly,” said Fenton, picking up a quill pen, “they must attack in force and crush me. To deal even more plainly, they must attack my house and draw me out.”

“Sir, I do not say this will happen. Only that it may. But if so: ay, tonight!”

“For my part,” said Fenton leisurely, “I pray they will make a tack at it. For I have devoted some thought to this business …”

“What?”

“And I have devised a small plan. Come; look across my shoulder while I sketch.”

Giles moved round. Drawing a sheet of parchment towards him, Fenton dipped pen in ink and sketched rapidly what looked like a minor military campaign. As he sketched, his quick, terse words stabbed at every point in explanation. At the end he wrote down five names, including his own. He paused there, hesitantly, as Giles whistled.

“And yet …” Fenton said in despondency.

“Come, sir! What is’t?”

“These men,” said Fenton, pointing towards the names, “are my servants. Can I, durst I, ask them to risk their lives?”

Giles nimbly ran round to the other side of the desk and faced him in amazement.

“Why, ’tis required by all masters,” he said, rather puzzled. “And here! Sir, have you once considered what your servants, men or women, think of you? Or have thought of you since a certain date,” and Giles’s eyes slid round. “To be exact, the 10th of May last?”

Fenton’s laced band seemed to grow tighter round his throat. He did not look up, but made aimless marks with the pen. May 10th had been the first day of his new life in old London. But Giles, in a new kind of passion, spoke quietly.

“Since then,” he demanded, “has any heard the old, ‘Curse thee, what good art thou?’ or ‘Rot th’ soul, be off!’—with a bottle flung at the head to follow? Or floggings with the whip, even the cat-of-nine-tails, for the lightest offence? Or maniac ravings in the stables, and one near murder?

“Since then,” pursued Giles, “have you brought the lowest of bawds from Whetstone Park to this house? And bidden them carouse, drunken and naked, singing songs in your own withdrawing room facing the street? Whilst you sat back, with a bottle in either hand, and sang with them?”

Fenton’s hand went up in protest, though still he did not raise his eyes.

“No more!” he said, thinking what Sir Nick must have been like. “Forebear; I command it!”

“As pleaseth you, sir.”

Giles lifted his shoulders. Both were silent for a moment.

“Yet still I ask,” Giles burst out, “what of those same servants now? They have all they desire, and more. In this house flogging is abolished. The stablemen have but to request; you grant, at the small severity of a bath. Some saw you pluck the secret from poisoned sack posset as though you had eyes could look through brick walls; they saw the slut Kitty conveyed not to the gallows, but set free with a couple of guineas in her hand. Sir, they would die for you! And have I no gratitude?”

“For the last time, leave off!”

Still Fenton did not look. He was wondering, from that curious glance of Giles at mention of May 10th, how much Giles knew or guessed. And, above all, Lydia! No; Lydia could not have guessed.

“Why, then,” said Giles, “I alter my discourse. But, sir, one thing must be altered!”

He stabbed a bony forefinger at the five names Fenton had written on the edge of the parchment.

“Sir Nick, you well know me for near a fine swordsman. My dagger play, in old time, hath been considered even better. Why is my name not there? Why is it not sixth among those to defend this house?”

“Giles, Giles, you are not … not youthful. I observed it when we were first at practice. This business may be long.”

Giles drew himself up.

“Sir, you cannot prevent it,” he said quietly. “This night, God willing, I stand at your side.”

Something stung at the back of Fenton’s eyes, and he put up a hand to shield them. Though nearly all of the old Professor Fenton had gone, enough remained to feel heavily embarrassed, to look in any direction save at Giles.

“Well, well!” he growled, and quickly wrote Giles’s name at the end of the list. “There is little now to be done. Pray go belowstairs; acquaint Big Tom, Whip, Job, and Harry with our scheme. Let the weapons stand ready as I have chosen them.”

All Giles’s briskness had returned.

“Shall I order the shutters to be put up, sir?”

“No! Never! That will warn them we expect them, if indeed they come. Every man to his bed, until roused. Let Harry stand watch; all lights gone by ten of the clock. And—and no word of this to my lady.”

“Sir, that is understood.”

“As for the mastiffs …”

“Now, come sir! They are poisoned; of no use to us.”

“Am I not sensible of that?” demanded Fenton, throwing down his pen and leaping up. “But have them brought up to the withdrawing room … ay, carrot-pate, I said withdrawing room … where they may be in comfort, and Mr. Milligrew as well!”

Always, when Lydia’s image came before his mind, the old Sir Nick maddened him.

“Have not others, called human beings but far beneath our mastiffs for sense and decency, used that room to be ‘comfortable’? A truce to your impertinence; I’ll hear no more of it; go!”

And Giles ran.

Fenton fired the pen at the desk, and then went upstairs to wash for supper.

Without doubt, he decided, this notion of a night attack was madness: inspired only by thick heat, a storm that would not break, and a sense as of lice crawling along open nerves. But it was a possibility. As for Lydia …

When he ate with Lydia, in the shining cavern of silver with the portraits, he tried to be too merry and laugh too much. Lydia, though she dutifully laughed with him, kept her blue eyes fixed steadily on his face, searching for his mood.

“Nick,” she said, “is it danger? Are those your thoughts?”

“In all honesty, no.” He smiled at her, pressing her hand against the table. “At least, I swear there is no danger attending you.”

“But I know that,” protested Lydia, in genuine surprise. “Are you not here?”

Again Fenton lowered his head, his hands out to cut straight portions from a vile omelette prepared for her.

“Lydia, dear,” he said, “this I beg: be not deceived by these fine names they give me. I am the poorest and merely most lucky man who ever tried to stand on his guard in three positions at once. Never hold me high! Think only …”

But Lydia did not hear him.

“You would ask me some question!” she said suddenly, and drew in her breath. “Dear heart, what is it?”

Her instinct was near the uncanny; again the arrow went dead to the target. He was wondering how much she knew, or how much she had been hurt, by the former Sir Nick. But he laughed, and swore, by any oath she liked, there was no question.

“Well, then!” said Lydia, relieved but still doubtful. She glanced over her shoulder, as though to make sure none could hear. “Promise you’ll not jest or make sport of me?”

“Have I ever done so?”

“For days,” said Lydia in a low voice, “I have had a fancy. I think that I am going to die, and soon.”

Fenton’s knife dropped clattering on the table.

“Lydia! Never say that!”

“’Tis but a fancy,” answered Lydia, her eyes seeming to grope their way. “I do not wish to die, now that you and I have found each other.” She turned to him. “Tell me this is folly!”

He told her. He told her at length, as in different fashion he had told her before, and presently he saw reassurance, even laughter, return to her.

“Foh, I am a simpleton!” said Lydia, tossing her head. “’Tis gone; and I’ll forget it.”

But Fenton could not forget.

That night they went to bed before ten o’clock, in Lydia’s room as always. Still the sky was a hollow of thick heat; outside the windows, each leaf stood as still as though limned there.

Before going to bed he made certain preparations with old clothes and weapons, setting them ready. Since neither he nor Lydia troubled their heads about night habit, he could be dressed in a few seconds. Lydia watched him, but did not speak.

Both were soon asleep, though he fretted and fumed. One thing he could never do, with cajoleries or mirth or plain cursing; and that was to persuade Lydia to open a window at night. She swore, sometimes on her knees, that it would kill them. The uneasiness pressed down. Once, as he felt himself falling into a doze, he thought he saw a distant flash of lightning. …

Then his blackened dreams grew distorted; not quite nightmares, yet menaces he could neither see nor touch, but always hear.

One scene, briefly, went blurred and twisted through his mind. He heard, amid much noise, the thudding chest notes of a railway engine. The guard’s whistle blew. He was at a carriage door, leaning out, in some kind of soup-plate helmet. As he moved along, a solemn-faced, pretty girl about fifteen years old, with black hair and grey eyes, was handing him a bunch of flowers and a silver-wrapped ounce of tobacco.

Blurred, the face swept behind, as others milled about him. “Major Fenton?” “Yes?” “Telegram, sir.” He could recall his fingers opening out the rough whitish paper of the telegram and the unsteady words, “Fear shall miss you in crowd at station had flowers tobacco but if miss you all good wishes your friend Mary Grenville.”

And, inexplicably wound through all this, there was a great noise of voices singing to music. It was a cheerful song, roared out with mighty cheerfulness; yet underneath every word ran a strain of heartbreak. So faint, so far away, he could barely hear the words.

“Pack up your troubles in your old kit-bag,

And smile, smile, smile …!”

The train still rumbled on. Somehow the sky was pitch-black. His eyes strained close to the luminous hands and numbers of a wrist watch. His feet were near the top of a muddy stepladder, or some kind of ladder. In his right hand, held partly upwards, was a … no, not a revolver, but some pistol-like arrangement he must fire upwards. Some distance ahead, artillery opened with a bursting crash, and the sky went white. …

“Nick!” Lydia’s voice clove through his dreams, shocking him awake.

Instantly he knew he was in the outward semblance of Sir Nick Fenton, and where he was. That noise had been a long peal of thunder. Since the bed curtains had not been drawn close, every window of Lydia’s chamber had gone white with lightning.

He himself was half-sitting up, Lydia pressing his head to her breast, holding her arms tightly round him.

“Dear heart,” she whispered, not quite steadily, “you did have such horrid dreams, and did speak in your sleep.”

“Oh?” said Fenton, his breathing grown more quiet. “What did I say?”

“Nay, I am not sure.” Lydia tried to laugh. “’Twas English; yes, to be sure; but so quaint and strange there was but one part I could make out, where you seemed to speak to a parcel of men.”

“What did I say?” he insisted.

Lydia’s own quaint pronunciation stood out vividly against a background of what should have been ancient curtains and dead dust.

“‘We must pass the machine guns and the wire! But if you will look at this map …’”

Fenton laughed inside himself. That was the time when lowly Major Fenton planned each move of the British and French break-through which nearly smashed Jerry in ’16, and for which General Fathead-Fathead-What’s-his-name got the credit. Fenton hated it. It was lost, gone, forgotten!

“Sweet heart,” Lydia added quietly, “that was not the true reason I woke you.”

“Well?”

“I think there are many men before this house, and they cry out.”

Lydia’s body was warm and damp. He kissed her once, and in the next second was on his feet on the floor, groping for clothes.

“Strike a light!” he said harshly.

He did not trouble with underlinen. He found old velvet breeches, and thrust his feet into them. Scratch, scratch went the point of the tinderbox; the grease-ignited flame went up, the taper kindled blue, then into a glow.

Fenton stamped into a pair of high, heavy riding boots. From them he had detached his usual light spurs; now he wore heavy spurs with large, sharpened rowels. He buckled on his sword belt, but he did not wear the customary belt or his beloved Clemens Hornn sword.

The two chains held a new scabbard with a blade somewhat longer and heavier, double-edged, with a ring-hilt. Ready to hand was a main-gauche, or left-hand dagger—from long ago, when his forebears had fought with sword and dagger—which tapered two feet to its point, with a fine, curved shell-steel guard over the hand.

This he thrust into his belt. Finally, in breeches pocket rested snugly a round, very heavy steel length of seven inches: the axle of a giant coach, for blows with the right hand.

“Why don’t they call?” he demanded. “Where the devil is Giles?”

Before he could complete the sentence, there was a quick knock at the door. Lydia, drawing up the sheet, shrank back. Giles stood in the doorway, neat and prim, except with a bared sword in his right hand and another main-gauche dagger stuck into his belt.

But, more than this, Giles wore the old Cavalier helmet: not much changed, except for sharper line, in this present day of 1675. It was open-faced, with steel flaps over the ears; the flaps could be left undone or buckled under the chin.

“It is prepared,” said Giles. “Sir, where is your helmet?”

And now the blood ran smoothly but hotly through Fenton’s veins.

“D’ye think I’d wear a helmet to fight that scum?” he snarled. “Dignify the swine with military dress against them?”

“Sir, you have commanded the rest of us to wear helmets. In full melee, any stray cudgel may strike you down.” From behind his back Giles took another helmet and held it out. “I feared this,” he said.

“Giles,” said Lydia, “give me the helmet.”

Giles hurried forward and handed it to her. With one hand holding the sheet, Lydia stretched out her other arm and held the helmet towards Fenton.

“Wear it,” she said. “For if you die, then must I die too. And not by hand of any rioter, but by my own.”

There was a bursting crash of glass as a heavy stone struck the front window of the upstairs passage.

“No Popery!” bellowed a dozen voices, seeming far away. “Death to Popery!”

Without hesitation Fenton put on the helmet. The inside of its skull piece was heavily padded, with leather crossings to hold it firmly. To protect the back of the neck there were lines of linked steel tapering to a point: the lobster-tail. Fenton buckled the chin strap. Then, not troubling with shirt, he pulled on an old loose velvet coat.

“Now!” he said.

Hurrying out into the passage, he raced towards the front for a view of the attackers from the broken window.

“Sir, I count their numbers as—”

“A moment’s peace, Giles!”

Fenton could see them fairly well. Towards the rear, they had for light a lanthorn stuck on a pole and a linkman’s torch curling up yellow flame. They were spread out thickly and raggedly in front of the house in straight lines. On the other side of Pall Mall, which was tolerably wide for such a lane, there were houses or high-sloping banks.

In the front line, which had come no closer than within six feet of the lime trees with their broad opening, Fenton counted eight swords. Many swords were raised in the centre; but they were useless for close fighting. There were bristles of heavy cudgels, innumerable stones. But the weight of the cudgels, Fenton rejoiced to see, was not in the front line or on their right flank.

“No popery!”

“Hang the warlock!”

“Let him stand out! Wizard, Papist for his mistress, son of a Papist whore!”

As they saw two figures at that window, their shouts volleyed out again. Their hatred was a physical wave; it could almost be smelt. But, like most mobs, they hesitated and snarled. They would not yet come closer than six feet of the opening in the lime trees.

Fenton, his brain swiftly sorting out each detail, had put all into place.

“Downstairs!” he said. And, as they hurried down, “Where’s the rain? I hear none.”

“Sir, no drop is fallen! If we stay ten minutes more, we shall fight in a great store of rain on a road like hasty pudding!”

Beginning with what seemed like splintering echoes, a great crash of thunder exploded above the house; every window stood out ghostly white.

But downstairs there was no light, save for the glimmer of one taper in Fenton’s study. As he opened the door, four helmets turned slowly round, with the eyes beneath them seeming changed and evil.

Every man carried the rounded, murderous coach axle in his pocket. Big Tom, whose helmet had an old-style nose guard, carried a length of wood not as long or heavy as a fire log, though it seemed so. His immense fingers went round it entirely, and a cudgel was stuck in his belt. He would swing the somewhat dwarfed log, parallel to the ground, like a bat.

Whip, the heavy-shouldered coachman, carried a log much like it; there was an anticipatory grin on his blue-chinned face. Job, the groom, had once been a juggler at a travelling fair; he carried two very heavy cudgels, being able to hit with lightning speed from either hand, crosshand, or both together.

The third swordsman, including Fenton and Giles, was young Harry. All four helmets had an ugly shine, despite dark spots or rust stains, as Fenton came in to give them last orders.

“I will be short,” he said. “But hear this! They attack us. We are protected. D’ye know what’ll happen to them? They’ll hang, every man jack of them! Fear not to kill them!

“There’s but one way to deal with what I call mob. They hang back at first, if they have no leader; you hear them out there? When I give the signal, do you instantly strike! You are not come to parley. You are not come for gentle pushes. You are come to crush and destroy and kill! Is that plain?”

A low growl went through the group, and the candle flame was reflected in their eyes.

“Good; enough!” said Fenton, and flung a pile of books off the desk, amid dust and thuds, so that he could speak to them more closely above the table. “We make sure our design is set. First! I go out alone, and spit in their faces.”

Young Harry, with sword and dagger, cried out at this.

“Sir, for God’s sake! We are six men; they are more than sixty! Can we fight six against sixty?”

“Ay, and two against two hundred!” snarled Fenton, and whirled on him. “If you have no stomach for it, then go back and sleep amid the women!”

And now, from under those old helmets about Fenton, rose an almost animal snarl. Giles, standing quietly with motionless sword, might well have thought the old Sir Nick returned.

But Giles would have been wrong. Fenton was whipping these men, according to his plan, into the savagery of fighting animals.

“Stay, where was I? Let the lily-livered bitch’s son sleep where he please!”

“Sir, I will stand!”

“Then hark to me! Thus! I go out alone. The house is dark. I set open the front door. Now the three who carry log bats and cudgels … we’ll call them woodmen; ’tis nothing accurate; no matter! Tom, Whip, Job! Move now to my left!”

They did so. Big Tom’s eyes, out of matted hair and helmet, had acquired a reddish shine. Slowly Job moved the two large cudgels. Whip smiled.

“When I am halfway towards the opening between the lime trees, you three woodmen slip from the house; all quiet; no sound. None will see you if you crouch down; they have but a watchman’s lanthorn and a linkboy’s light. You will move on my left side; my left. When you have come to the first tree at the street, crouch down unseen and wait my sign. Understood?”

“Ay, sir!” three voices together snarled back the answer.

“Now. Giles and Harry! You, with myself, are our three swordsmen. The same applies to you two as to the other three, except that you will be on my right. My right. Understood?”

Two replies shot back at him. From upstairs there was a loud, long run of clatterings as a shower of stones struck front windows, accompanied by an overset of furniture and yells from outside.

“Be easy!” said Fenton, and every man stood motionless. “They’ve not yet the stomach for a dash at it, else they’d not throw stones. Here’s our design near complete!

“Here am I, in the middle facing out. On my left,” his arm moved, “three concealed woodmen. On my right,” again his arm moved, “two concealed swordsmen. When you see me raise my sword high in the air—thus!—both groups, crouched down, will turn (woodmen left, swordsmen right) round the tree, and creep out between the mob and the trees. Be sure there is room for you. If possible, you may even try to seem part of the mob.

“When you move out, not an eye will see you. I’ll contrive it; I swear this! All eyes will be on my upraised sword. That is all, save I hope you have not forgot your final order? Woodmen?”

He swung round to Whip, Job, and Big Tom.

“Nay, sir,” snapped Whip, smiling as he fingered his log bat. “When you cry, ‘Let go!’ then we three turn their right flank,”—out went his left hand, facing him—“and turn it back, so we force all round to meet us in the narrower width of the lane.”

“Good! Swordsmen?”

“When you shall cry, ‘Swords!’ then all of us leap at the line together,” said a now-tense Giles, “and God for King Charles!”

“Good. Now but a final word to the woodmen. Never do you strike, you logmen who will catch three, or four, or five person at once, never do you strike at their middles or their chests. They may seize the log and pull it down. Let fly always, with all strength, at their faces; split me their skulls and open their faces like a pulped orange. Cudgeller with two clubs, kill by head-smashing with every stroke. When you are drawn into the mob, as we may all be, let go your log; meet them with steel coach axles and extra cudgels. Have all here sharpened spur rowels, as I did order?”

There was a low, fierce hissing of assent.

“Should any catch at your feet, you’ll know what to do by grinding the spur backwards. Swordsmen!”

“Ay, sir?”

“I do command you: fight as long as you may on the fringe of the mob. Else your swords will be useless. Give me no adroit play of the fencing school; give me but a dead man every time your sword or dagger plungeth out. If you be drawn inside, as you will be, let go your swords; use the iron bar for heads, but never let go the long dagger. Keep it below; never seen; always striking. Strike for the lower belly; strike everywhere and always! —Now I have done.”

Fenton saw, in their eyes and mouths, that they were now wrought to the pitch. Already he had drawn his long, double-edged sword. He pulled the main-gauche dagger from his belt, settling his left hand round the grip and his thumb in its thumb groove.

“Now I go out; stand ready,” he said.

At the doorway, as he opened the door, he swung round once more.

“Never falter. Never cease to strike. This mob is a tyrant, is he? God’s body, let’s adventure it! Three swordsmen and three woodmen shall bring the tyrant down!”

And he closed the door behind him, in a pitch-dark hall. As he strode towards the front door, he had little hatred for mob in the abstract. What he saw before him were the Country party: rich, fat, landed gentlemen, who would upset the throne to gain more power and money—just as Pym and Hampden and Cromwell had done, more than a generation before—and whom Whig historians with flat lying sometimes called “the people of England.”

People of England!

Fenton threw open the front door. The blast of shouting, as lanthorn and link torch picked out his figure, rolled over him like a wind. Two heavy stones, to which he paid no attention, whizzed past shoulder and head.

As he strolled forward to meet them, he let out his voice at full power.

“A good damnation to ye, scum! What d’ye want?”

Again, as though rattling together like an avalanche, an enormous peal of thunder split above them. Down the lift of the lightning, far behind the backs of the mob, ran a white crooked bolt; all heard or saw the crack, sizzle, and white flare as it struck a tree.

Fenton stood motionless, halfway between road and house, swinging sword and dagger with true pleasure, until that was over. Then he walked straight to the open space between the limes, looking out over them contemptuously.

“Where’s your leader?” he demanded. Then, bellowing it out: “Stand back!”

The impact of personality, the bolt drive of one who knows his mind, will send even an overwrought mob slightly backwards. The straggling line, still six feet from the lime trees, moved instinctively back two paces, while a woman’s voice screamed at them not to move.

Fenton, who sensed that his three woodmen were now on his left, the two swordsmen on his right, rejoiced that there was more room for them.

“Where’s your leader, I say?” he shouted. Then up went his sword, high up, glittering in the light of a bobbing lanthorn and an unsteady link light.

Every eye was fixed on it for a moment, as eyes had been fixed on his bared teeth and his inflamed eyes below the line of the helmet. He could barely see the crouched line of shadows which ran out, left and right, in front of the trees.

“I am the leader, sir,” snapped a harsh voice from the eight swordsmen huddled together too close on the right.

Out stepped a man who was fat-bodied but very lean and dignified of face, an ideal Country party member, with fine clothes and with a green ribbon in his hat. The crowd half-stilled as he spoke out.

“I am Samuel Warrender, Esquire,” he announced. “Are you a Papist, or no?”

“No! But your behaviour tonight is like to make me one!”

“Have you knowledge to foretell the future?”

“Yes!” bellowed Fenton, at the top of his voice.

He felt, he knew himself, the chill of superstitious dread which made cold the hearts of them all. Now, now, was the time to strike.

“Then you’ll have war?” shouted Fenton, lifting his sword again. “Let go!”

Almost unseen, appearing gigantic in those shifting dim lights, three figures well spaced apart arose in front of the mob’s right flank—to be exact, the left side as you faced the line. Two log bats, six feet long, smashed round from the shoulder, as two cudgel clubs in the hands of one man began to dance like the legs of murder.

The first line hardly even saw what came at them. All were concentrated on Fenton. But, as the second line glimpsed their attackers, one inhuman screech of terror went up from them. Instantly the log bats swung again; the cudgel clubs never ceased as Job danced along the line.

“Back!” yelled one long-legged man in a fustian cap, who had tried and failed to climb a steep bank on the far side of the street.

“Move back! Move back!”

“Back towards Charing Cross!”

Now the dead or badly wounded, before the woodmen attackers, either sprawled backwards or fell face forwards through the broad spaces between the three woodmen, amid a rising cloud of reddish-brown dust. Though dust settled on the blood, it was well if an onlooker did not see their faces. One man, in periwig and gold buttons, dived forward, for some unknown reason clutching the gold chain to his gold watch. He ran a few low steps, watch and chain flying out, until he dropped head down, face snake-veined with blood in the dust cloud.

Meanwhile, those on the left wing—or right side as Fenton faced them—hardly knew what was happening until a series of shouts in the din told them.

Fenton, as cool and detached as he had ever been, stood as though he held a watch.

“Right!” he thought, as the second hand ticked into place.

And out he ran, past the front of the crooked line, with Giles following and then young Harry.

Bang went a heavy club, thudding harmlessly off a woodman’s helmet. The mob’s wing had now been turned back so that it stood facing them across the road; and, as they pivoted back, automatically the swordsmen’s wing turned with them.

Now the position was altered. Now Fenton’s men faced a much narrower line, cramped up together, in the width of a none-too-wide lane. In the mob’s original position, their line had been too thick and stretched across the lane in front of the house. They could have surrounded and crushed any force which ventured out.

But now it was different. Now the mob line, though still too wide to be covered by six men unless they hammered death across it, was huddled and packed with their backs to the east. …

“Swords!” shouted Fenton.

And six helmeted attackers, as one man, struck the line at once.

So vicious was the spring, so damn-you determined were the attackers, that they sent the mob line reeling back twenty paces in half as many seconds. The lantern swung wildly on its pole, the yellow-blue link light streamed out. Though no thunder could be heard amid those cries, the lightning cut out harsh, hard lines of eyes and mouths.

Eight swordsmen leaped out at guard against three, and all eight were down, dead or writhing, in shortly over a minute. It is only fair to say that all were none too expert, save one who gave Fenton six passes and nearly thirty seconds—until Fenton broke his feint with a time thrust and ran him through the throat.

Unfortunately, the first dash at Fenton was made by Samuel Warrender, Esquire. Mr. Warrender went out at full lunge, not well, at the belly; Fenton heard the hiss as he parried; then he shortened his sword and stabbed the Green Ribboner through the heart. Mr. Warrender went forward on the ground, twisting like a trodden worm.

Now the swordsmen, leaping over the fallen and kicking back with spurs at hands which would upset them, struck at the mob itself, which either stepped back or ran out to fight murderously with heavy cudgels. Giles, cool and methodical, never smote out with sword or dagger without finding a mark. Harry, pale but with tight-set teeth, plunged in a-slashing with his double-edged blade; they saw it glitter overhead, and glitter again.

But now the attack was almost halted; the mob began to turn.

Having lost their heads at the outset, they planned the counter­attack. Even their voices were stilled. Fenton, drawing back, saw that swords and daggers and cudgels were being passed hand over hand to the front.

They had discovered that the heaviest cudgel blow on a helmet will do little more than make its wearer’s ears ring with dizziness. But, if you swung for the ear flap, it may break the jaw. Again, one or two might spurt through with daggers, to stab the woodmen from the back. …

He saw, with horror, that Big Tom was down. Far to his right there was a crack as Harry’s sword snapped in two. He, Fenton, must guard the whole line.

Even as he thought that, a tatterdemalion with a shock of black hair wormed through the line with a dagger for Job. Job, white-faced and panting, did not see it. Fenton leaped sideways to the left. His short overarm cut nearly lopped the hand from Shock-hair’s wrist; the latter stared at it unbelievingly. Another tatterdemalion, this one with a broad-leafed hat and spectacles, fought through with a sword.

Fenton’s rapier went through him from side to side, so that the ring hilt thudded on his left ribs and the point jumped out on the other side. As Fenton yanked it out and back, the man raced forward, hat and spectacles flying off, and seemed to burrow his head into the ground.

Back Fenton raced through the dust fog. And he saw, now, that Harry was down too.

“You can’t do it, sir!” Giles’s voice said clearly from somewhere. “If we fight now, we must fight forward!”

Yes, Giles was right. Fenton, maddened, plunged straight at the mob.

For some moments, now, you might think he had been gripped by Sir Nick. His dagger with the curved hand guard, meant for straight left-hand thrusts, stabbed everywhere for the lower abdomen. Despite what he had told his own followers, the mob could not even bind his sword arm.

The razorish blade edge chopped, chopped, and chopped to the right; then out the point shot twice into faces, and back again to chop. They could not hold his arm; it was too elusive; and when many hands seized for the wrist, they found sharp steel which sent paralyzing pain in fire up their arms.

So vicious was his forward assault that the whole section of the line staggered back, driving their elbows into those behind to make room. A heavy cudgel, swung against his right ear flap, for some reason did not even stun him. A dagger, lunging at the left side, drew blood but only ripped through the loose velvet coat and tore part of it away.

Suddenly he found himself in an open half-circle, with not a soul at his back.

He could hardly draw breath; he could barely see them; but Fenton’s brain was there.

All about them it was almost quiet, except for thuds and grunts and hisses. Pervading all in the dust was the harsh, raw stink of sweat which, more than any blood, thickens the nostrils in close fighting.

Distantly, from the Royal Mews, Fenton heard drums beating to arms. He did not want the aid of the military. Having outlined this battle plan, he would not let it fail.

“If I had a minute to think,” he prayed in his mind. “Thirty seconds! Even fifteen …!”

To grasp an instant’s thought, he tried what in his age of 1925 he would have called bluff. He raised his head, turning it partly over his right shoulder.

“Set loose the mastiffs!” he bellowed. “Thunder! Lion! Greedy! Bare-behind!”

The group in front of him quivered, but held their ground. He could pick out only a heavy man, in the stained blue smock of a butcher, who carried a club; and a little Alsatian, all dirt and hair, with the dagger that had missed.

“Kill the devil in velvet!” snarled the butcher. “Kill …”

Then he, like all others, stopped as if struck dumb.

All heard the din of barking down the road, and the smashing of glass. All saw the three great mastiffs, seeming even huger by that weird light, leap out from between the poplars. Greedy was dead, and could not hear. But Thunder, Lion, Bare-behind—poisoned, half-blind, and sick—the fighting watchdogs answered their call.

They smelt the spilled blood. They knew this was no half-playful savaging in a garden. Brindled, tawny, and fawn-coloured, they leaped with bared teeth for their enemies between their friends, and they sprang high for the throat.

One last command Fenton gave.

“Forward!” And then: “God for King Charles!”

Up over the mob, like a man out of water, rose the helmet and whiskers and immense shoulders of Big Tom, lashing out like a Titan with cudgel and coach axle. Whip and Job, spent and tottering, felt the hot energy which is a man’s second strength. Fenton plunged straight at the mob, sword and dagger a-glitter. Casting off all coolness or caution, Giles ran beside him.

And the mob broke.

For a few seconds Fenton did not notice it. One small figure detached itself at the back, and ran hard towards the thoroughfare of hay and grain, generally called Haymarket. One figure was followed by two or three, then half a dozen and a dozen.

The lanthorn toppled and fell. The torch sizzled out of sight. Men, seen as hardly larger than ants, were running hard towards Charing Cross or down King Street. When the second or third line melted behind them, the first line could only curse. With a last shower of clubs, cudgels, stones, daggers, and swords flung at the attackers, they turned and ran hardest of all.

“Hold!” cried Fenton, lifting his sword.

Just thirty seconds after they had struck the mob line with a second thunderbolt, not one enemy was left. The lane lay deserted, even eerie, save for the many dead and wounded behind them. Some of the wounded moaned, or tried to crawl. The torch, which would not burn out even under a light rain, sizzled yellow and blue on its side.

But what came to them, just as Fenton was giving instructions, was not a light rain. With a last explosive crack of thunder, the skies opened and the storm tore down.