"We haven't killed anybody--but ourselves!" The answer flashed. "Pretty near it! Them folks at Wanchester only just got out--an' there were two children among 'em," cried a man near the waggon. "An' they've just been up to something new at Brownmouth--" All heads turned towards a young man who spoke from the back of the audience. "News just come to the post-office," he shouted--"as the new pier was burnt out early this morning. There's a bit o' wanton mischief for you!" A howl of wrath rose from the audience, amid which the closing words of Delia's speech were lost. Winnington caught a glimpse of her face--pale and excited--as she retreated from the front of the waggon in order to make room for her co-speaker. Gertrude Marvell, as Winnington soon saw, was far more skilled in street oratory than her pupil. By sheer audacity she caught her audience at once, and very soon, mingling defiance with sarcasm, she had turned the news of the burnt pier into a Suffragist parable. What was that blaze in the night, lighting up earth and sea, but an emblem of women's revolt flaming up in the face of dark injustice and oppression? Let them rage! The women mocked. All tyrannies disliked being disturbed--since the days of Nebuchadnezzar. And thereupon, without any trace of excitement, or any fraction of Delia's eloquence, she built up bit by bit, and in face of the growing hostility of the crowd, an edifice of selected statements, which could not have been more adroit. It did not touch or persuade, but it silenced; till at the end she said--each word slow and distinct-- "Now--all these things _you_ may do to women, and nobody minds--nobody troubles at all. But if _we_ make a bonfire of a pier, or an empty house, by way of drawing attention to your proceedings, then, you see red. Well, here we are!--do what you like--torture, imprison us!--you are only longing, I know--some of you--to pull us down now and trample on us, so that you may _show_ us how much stronger men are than women! All right!--but where one woman falls, another will spring up. And meanwhile the candle we are lighting will go on burning till you give us the vote. Nothing simpler--nothing easier. _Give us the vote_!--and send your canting Governments, Liberal, or Tory, packing, till we get it. But until then--windows and empty houses, and piers and such-like, are nothing--but so many opportunities of making our masters uncomfortable, till they free their slaves! Lucky for you, if the thing is no worse!" She paused a moment, and then added with sharp and quiet emphasis--