Page:A Child of the Jago - Arthur Morrison.djvu/111

 and Dicky was pushed further back. Over the shoulders of those about him, Dicky saw a tall hat, and then the head beneath it. It was the stranger he had seen in Edge Lane—the parson; active and resolute.

Nora Walsh he took by the shoulders and flung back among the others, and, as he turned on him, the man who held Roper's wrist released it and backed off.

"What is this?" demanded the new-comer, stern and hard of face. "What is all this?" He bent his frown on one and another about him, and as he did it, some shrank uneasily, and on the faces of others fell the blank lack of expression that was wont to meet police enquiry in the Jago. Dicky looked to see this man beaten down, kicked and stripped. But a well-dressed stranger was so new a thing in the Jago, this one had dropped among them so suddenly, and had withal so bold a confidence, that the Jagos stood irresolute. A toff was not a person to be attacked without due