What an abominable thing! Why, the grass would all be trampled down; and these dirty people, these slum folk, who seem to spring out of the earth when anything of a disagreeable or shameful nature is taking place,--a fire, for instance, or a brawl,--might easily bring infectious diseases on to those gravel paths where the little Tapsters and their like run about, playing their innocent games. Some careless person had evidently left the gate unlocked, and the fight, or whatever it was, must be taking place inside the Inclosure! Mr. Tapster tried in vain to see what was going on inside the railings, but everything beyond the brightly lighted road was wrapped in gray darkness. Some one suddenly held up high a flaming torch, and the watcher at the window saw that the shadowy crowd which had managed to force its way into the Park hung together, like bees swarming, on the farther lawn through which flowed the Serpentine. With the gleaming of the yellow, wavering light there had fallen a sudden hush and silence, and Mr. Tapster wondered uneasily what those people were doing there, and what it was they were pressing forward so eagerly to see. [Illustration: "HE ... TURNED TO SEE HIS HALL INVADED BY A STRANGE AND SINISTER QUARTET"] Then he realized that it must have been a fight, after all, for now the crowd was parting in two, and down the lane so formed Mr. Tapster saw coming toward the gate, and so in a sense toward himself, a rather pitiful little procession. Some one had evidently been injured, and that seriously; for four men, bearing a sheep-hurdle on which lay a huddled mass, were walking slowly toward the gate, and he heard distinctly the gruffly uttered words: "Stand back, please--back, there! We're going across the road." The now large crowd suddenly swayed forward; indeed, to Mr. Tapster's astonished eyes, they seemed to be actually making a rush for his house, and a moment later they were pressing around his area-railings. Looking down on the upturned faces below him, Mr. Tapster was very glad that a stout pane of glass stood between himself and the sinister-looking men and women who seemed to be staring up at him, or rather at his windows, with faces full of cruel, wolfish curiosity. He let the blind fall to gently. His interest in the vulgar, sordid scene had suddenly died down; the drama was now over; in a moment the crowd would disperse, the human vermin (but Mr. Tapster would never have used, even to himself, so coarse an expression) would be on their way back to their burrows. But before he had even time to rearrange the curtains in their right folds, there came a sudden loud, persistent knocking at his front door.