And at the same moment a mounted constable, who had been steadily making his way to them, opened a way for the two J.P.'s through the crowd, which after the tumult of hooting mingled with a small amount of applause, which had greeted Lathrop's peroration, had relapsed into sudden silence as Delia Blanchflower came forward, so that her opening words, in a rich clear voice were audible over a large area of the market-place. * * * * * What did she say? Certainly nothing new! Winnington knew it all by heart--had read it dozens of times in their strident newspaper, which he now perused weekly, simply that he might discover if he could, what projects his ward might be up to. The wrongs of women, their wrongs as citizens, as wives, as the victims of men, as the "refuse of the factory system"--Winnington remembered the phrase in the _Tocsin_ of the week before--the uselessness of constitutional agitation--the need "to shake England to make her hear"--it was all the "common form" of the Movement; and yet she was able to infuse it with passion, with conviction, with a wild and natural eloquence. Her voice stole upon him--hypnotized him. His political and economic knowledge told him that half the things she said were untrue, and the rest irrelevant. His moral sense revolted against her violence--her defence of violence. A girl of twenty-one addressing this ugly, indifferent crowd, and talking calmly of stone-throwing and arson, as though they were occupations as natural to her youth as dancing or love-making!--the whole thing was abhorrent--preposterous--to a man of order and peace. And yet he had never been more stirred, more conscious of the mad, mixed poetry of life, than he was, as he stood watching the slender figure on the waggon--the gestures of the upraised arm, and the play of the lights from the hotel, and from the side lamps, now on the deep white collar that lightened her serge jacket, and on the gesticulating hand, or the face that even in these disfiguring cross-lights could be nothing else than lovely. She was speaking too long--a common fault of women. He looked from her to the faces of the crowd, and saw that the spell, compounded partly of the speaker's good looks and partly of sheer gaping curiosity, was breaking. They were getting restless, beginning to heckle and laugh. Then he heard her say. "Of course we know--you think us fools--silly fools! You say it's a poor sort of fighting--and what do we hope to get by it? Pin-pricks you call it--all that women can do. Well, so it is--we admit it. It _is_ a poor sort of fighting--we don't admire it any more than you. But it's all men have left to women. You have disarmed us--and fooled us--and made slaves of us. You won't allow us the constitutional weapon of the vote, so we strike as we can, and with what weapons we can--" "Makin' bonfires of innercent people an' their property, ain't politics, Miss!" shouted a voice. "Hear, Hear!" from the crowd.