'I will go. Perhaps I may ask you to accompany me downstairs, and

bar the door behind me; my mother and sister will need that

protection.' 'Oh! Mr. Thornton! I do not know--I may be wrong--only--' But he was gone; he was downstairs in the hall; he had unbarred

the front door; all she could do, was to follow him quickly, and

fasten it behind him, and clamber up the stairs again with a sick

heart and a dizzy head. Again she took her place by the farthest

window. He was on the steps below; she saw that by the direction

of a thousand angry eyes; but she could neither see nor hear

any-thing save the savage satisfaction of the rolling angry

murmur. She threw the window wide open. Many in the crowd were

mere boys; cruel and thoughtless,--cruel because they were

thoughtless; some were men, gaunt as wolves, and mad for prey.

She knew how it was; they were like Boucher, with starving

children at home--relying on ultimate success in their efforts to

get higher wages, and enraged beyond measure at discovering that

Irishmen were to be brought in to rob their little ones of bread.

Margaret knew it all; she read it in Boucher's face, forlornly

desperate and livid with rage. If Mr. Thornton would but say

something to them--let them hear his voice only--it seemed as if

it would be better than this wild beating and raging against the

stony silence that vouchsafed them no word, even of anger or

reproach. But perhaps he was speaking now; there was a momentary

hush of their noise, inarticulate as that of a troop of animals.

She tore her bonnet off; and bent forwards to hear. She could

only see; for if Mr. Thornton had indeed made the attempt to

speak, the momentary instinct to listen to him was past and gone,

and the people were raging worse than ever. He stood with his

arms folded; still as a statue; his face pale with repressed

excitement. They were trying to intimidate him--to make him

flinch; each was urging the other on to some immediate act of

personal violence. Margaret felt intuitively, that in an instant

all would be uproar; the first touch would cause an explosion, in

which, among such hundreds of infuriated men and reckless boys,

even Mr. Thornton's life would be unsafe,--that in another

instant the stormy passions would have passed their bounds, and

swept away all barriers of reason, or apprehension of

consequence. Even while she looked, she saw lads in the

back-ground stooping to take off their heavy wooden clogs--the

readiest missile they could find; she saw it was the spark to the

gunpowder, and, with a cry, which no one heard, she rushed out of

the room, down stairs,--she had lifted the great iron bar of the

door with an imperious force--had thrown the door open wide--and

was there, in face of that angry sea of men, her eyes smiting

them with flaming arrows of reproach. The clogs were arrested in

the hands that held them--the countenances, so fell not a moment

before, now looked irresolute, and as if asking what this meant.

For she stood between them and their enemy. She could not speak,

but held out her arms towards them till she could recover breath.




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