The approaching column now deployed sharply, wheeled to the right of the obstruction, and became once more a solid mass, leaving the barricades behind them, the Chief of Police at the head of the line forcing the mob back to the curbstone, laying about him with his club, thumping heads and cracking wrists as he cleared the way.
The colonel of the regiment, his fatigue cap pulled over his eyes, sword in hand, shoulders erect, cape thrown back, was now abreast of the awning to which Oliver clung. Now and then he would glance furtively at the house-tops, as if expecting a missile.
The mob looked on sullenly, awed into submission by the gleaming bayonets. But for the shouts of the police, beating back the crowd, and the muttered curses, one would have thought a parade was in progress.
The first company had now passed--pale, haggard-looking men, their lips twitching, showing little flecks of dried saliva caked in the corners of their mouths, their hands tight about the butts of their muskets.
Oliver looked on with beating heart. The dull, monotonous tramp of their feet strangely affected him.
As the second line of bayonets came abreast of the awning-post, a blacksmith in a red shirt and leather apron, his arms bared to the elbow, sprang from the packed sidewalk into the open space between the troops and the gutter, lifted a paving stone high above his head and hurled it, with all his might, straight against the soldier nearest him. The man reeled, clutched at the comrade next him, and sank to the ground. Then, quick as an echo, a puff of white smoke burst out down the line of troops, and a sharp, ringing report split the air. The first shot of defence had been fired.
The whole column swayed as if breasting a gale.
Another and an answering shot now rang through the street. This came from a window filled with men gesticulating wildly. Instantly the troop. wheeled, raised their muskets, and a line of fire and smoke belched forth.
A terrible fear, that paled men's faces, followed by a moment of ominous silence, seized upon the mob, and then a wild roar burst out from thousands of human throats. The rectangular body of soldiers and the ragged-edged mob merged into a common mass. Men wrenched the guns from the soldiers and beat them down with the butt ends of the muskets.
Frenzied policemen hurled themselves into the midst of the disorganized militia, knocking up the ends of their muskets, begging the men to hold their fire. The air was thick with missiles; bricks from the house-tops; sticks of wood and coal from the fireplaces of the offices; iron bolts, castings, anything the crazed mob could find with which to kill their fellow-men. The roar was deafening, drowning the orders of the officers.
Oliver clung to his post, not knowing whether to drop into the seething mass or to run the risk of being shot where he was. Suddenly his eye singled out a soldier who stood at bay below him, swinging his musket, widening the circle about him with every blow.
The soldier's movements were hampered by his heavy overcoat and army blanket slung across his shoulder.
His face and neck were covered with blood and dirt, disfiguring him beyond recognition.
At the same instant Oliver became conscious that a man in blue overalls was creeping up on the soldier's rear to brain him with a cart-rung that he held in his hand.
A mist swam before the boy's eyes, and a great lump rose in his throat. The cowardice of the attack incensed him; some of the hot blood of the old ancestor that had crossed the flood at Trenton flamed up in his face. With the quickness of a cat he dropped to the sidewalk, darted forward, struck the coward full in the face with his clenched fist, tumbling him to the ground, wrenched the rung from his hands, and, jumping in front of the now almost overpowered soldier, swung the heavy stick about him like a flail, clearing the space before him.
The assaulting crowd wavered, fell back, and then, maddened at Oliver's defence of the invader, with a wild yell of triumph, swept the two young men off their feet, throwing them bodily down the steps of a ship-chandler's shop, the soldier knocked senseless by a blow from a brick which had struck him full in the chest.
Oliver lay still for a moment, raised his head cautiously and, putting forth all his strength, twisted his arms around the stricken man and rolled with him into the cellar. Then, springing to his feet, he slammed the door behind them and slipped in the bolt, before the mob could guess his meaning.
Listening at the crack of the door for a moment and finding they were not pursued, he stood over the limp body, lifted it in his arms, laid it on a pile of sails, and ran to the rear of the cellar for a bucket standing under a grimy window, scarcely visible in the gloom, now that the door was shut.
Under the touch of the cold water, the soldier slowly opened his eyes, straining them toward Oliver, as if in pain.
The two men looked, intently at each other; the soldier passing his hand across his forehead as if trying to clear his brain. Then lifting himself up on his elbow he gasped:
"Horn! Horn! My God!"
Oliver's heart stopped beating.
"Who are you?"
"John Grant."
Oliver saw only Margaret's face!
As though he were working for the woman he loved--doing what she would have done--he knelt beside the wounded man, wiped the blood and grime from his cheeks with his own handkerchief, loosening his coat, rubbing his hands, murmuring "Old fellow,"
"Dear John ": there was no time for other interchange of speech.
When at last Grant was on his feet the two men barricaded the doors more strongly, rolling heavy barrels against them, the sounds from the street seeming to indicate that an attack might be made upon them. But the mob had swept on and forgotten them, as mobs often do, while the fugitives waited, hardly daring to speak except in detached whispers, lest some one of the inmates of the warehouse overhead might hear them.
