Of all the strange things wrought in Bristol that night, of all the strangely begotten brood of riot and fire, and Reform, none were stranger than this meeting, if meeting that could be called where one was ignorant of the other’s presence, and he would not look upon her face. For he would not, perhaps he dared not. He stood with bent head, pondering and absorbed, until an uprush of sparks, more fiery than usual, and the movement of the crowd to avoid them, awoke him from his thoughts. Then his eyes fell on Mary’s uncovered head and neck, and he took the cloak from his own shoulders and put it on her, with a touch as if he blessed her. She was kneeling beside the couch at the moment, her head bent to her mother’s, her hair mingling with her mother’s, but he contrived to close his eyes and would not see his wife’s face. After that he moved to the farther side of the couch, where some sneaking hobbledehoys showed a disposition to break in upon them. And old as he was, and shaken and weary, he stood sentry there, a gaunt stooping figure, for long hours, until the prayed-for day began to break above Redcliffe and to discover the grim relics of the night’s work. XXXV THE MORNING OF MONDAY It has been said that midnight of that Sunday saw the alarm speeding along every road by which the forces of order could hope to be recruited; nevertheless in Bristol itself nothing was done to stay the work of havoc. A change had indeed come over the feeling in the city; for to acquiescence had succeeded the most lively alarm, and to approval, rage and boundless indignation. But the handful of officials who all day long had striven, honestly if not very capably, to restore order, were exhausted; and the public without cohesion or leaders were in no state to make head against the rioters. So great, indeed, was the confusion that a troop of Gloucestershire Yeomanry which rode in soon after dark received neither orders nor billets; and being poorly led, withdrew within the hour. This, with the tumult at Bath, where the quarters of the Yeomanry were beset by a mob of Reformers, who would not let them go to the rescue, completed the isolation of the city. One man only, indeed, in the midst of that welter, had it in his power to intervene with effect. And he could not be found. From Queen’s Square to Leigh’s Bazaar, where the Third Dragoons stood inactive by their horses; from Leigh’s to the Recruiting Office on College Green, where a couple of non-commissioned officers stood inactive; from the Recruiting Office to his lodgings in Unity Street, men, panting and protesting, in terror for their property, hurried in vain nightmare pursuit of that man. For to such men it seemed impossible that in face of the damage already done, of thirty houses in flames, of a mob which had broken all bounds, of a city disturbed to its entrails, he could still refuse to act.