Page:The cry for justice - an anthology of the literature of social protest. - (IA cryforjusticea00sinc).pdf/298

 a word, and not one of the police would have escaped alive; but the leader was not there, and the word was not given, so the wrong was done, and went unpunished.

I do not know how I reached my room that afternoon. The sight of the dead men lying stark there in the snow had excited me to madness. The picture of one man followed me like an obsession; he was wounded to death, shot through the lungs; he lifted himself up on his left hand and shook the right at the police, crying in a sort of frenzy till the spouting blood choked him—

"Bestien! Bestien!" ("Beasts! Beasts!")

I can still see him wiping the blood-stained froth from his lips; I went to help him; but all he could gasp was, "Weib! Kinder! (Wife, children!)" Never shall I forget the despair in his face. I supported him gently; again and again I wiped the blood from his lips; every breath brought up a flood; his poor eyes thanked me, though he could not speak, and soon his eyes closed; flickered out, as one might say, and he lay there still enough in his own blood; "murdered," as I said to myself when I laid the poor body back; "murdered!"

(As a result of this police action, the narrator goes to the next meeting of the strikers with a bomb in his pocket.)

The crowd began to drift away at the edges. I was alone and curiously watchful. I saw the mayor and the officials move off towards the business part of the town. It looked for a few minutes as if everything was going to pass over in peace; but I was not relieved. I could hear my own heart beating, and suddenly I felt something in the air; it was sentient with expectancy. I slowly turned my head. I was on the very outskirts of the crowd, and as I turned I saw that Bonfield had marched out his police, and was minded to take his own way with