“Gentlemen----” began the under-secretary, but his appeal for attention was unheeded. Raggett and his colleagues finished their whispered conversation, and without another word or sign marched out of the Government building. There was a call for silence in the street, instantly obeyed, and then the half-crazed shoemaker, mounted on the topmost of a flight of steps, reported in a few terse and savage sentences the failure of the deputation. Revolutionary action invariably brings to the front men who are prepared to out-Herod Herod, followers who become leaders, cranks who establish an ascendency which no one could have foreseen at the outset of the movement. Such a man was Raggett, whose power with a large section of the Leaguers was immediately manifested by the response to the keynote of his brief harangue. A sullen growl arose from those nearest to the demagogue; it spread and swelled in volume, until, from the great concourse stretching southward along Parliament Street, and northward towards Trafalgar Square, a terrifying roar of wrath went up from some five thousand throats. It rose and fell, and rose again, reaching its culminating savagery when suddenly each Leaguer raised both arms above his head. Then, as at a signal, ten thousand fists, many grasping cudgels and other rough-and-ready weapons, were shaken in the air. This united menace, that seemed to include the Home Office, the Treasury, Downing Street, and the very Houses of Parliament, was terrible in its volume and intensity. So appalling was the tumult, and so electrifying the excitement, that the horses of the troopers in the Horse Guard Shelters reared and plunged forward into the close ranks of the Leaguers who were standing on the pavement. Shouts of anger and fear now rent the air. One horse slipped upon the flagstones and threw its rider heavily among the crowd. The other, entirely beyond the trooper’s control, tore wildly through the fleeing mob towards Westminster. CHAPTER XXI THE DEVIL’S OWN ON THE DEFENSIVE The acute alarm now felt in Government circles led to a hasty decision to embody a large auxiliary force of special constables. A source of much anxiety was found in the rumoured designs of the Leaguers on certain important buildings connected with the Law. The Temple church, and the halls and libraries of the Inns of Court, both north and south of the Strand, were believed to be in jeopardy, and arrangements were made with the Inns of Court Volunteers to protect the prized and ancient buildings from attack or incendiarism. Both within and without the Law Courts a strong force of police was kept on duty day and night, and London solicitors furnished from among their number a large contingent of special constables to safeguard the Law Society’s hall and library in Chancery Lane.