Alf peeped out of an upper window, upset a jug of water over his brother, and in his panic fury flung the jug after it. It broke on Ernie's head and crashed to pieces on the step. Ernie, gasping, and bleeding from the head, staggered back into the road, half-stunned. Then he began to tear off his sopping clothes and throw them down into the dust at his feet. His voice was quiet as his face, smeared with blood, was moved. "You've got to ave it!" he called up to his brother. "May as well come and ave it now as wait for it." There had been a big football match on the Saffrons, and the crowd were just flocking away, in mood for a lark. The drenched and bleeding man stripping in the road, the broken crockery on the door-step, the white-faced fellow at the window, promised just the sensation they sought. Joyfully they gathered to see. Here was just the right finale pleasant Saturday afternoon. "I'm your landlord!" screamed Alf. "Remember that! I'll make you pay for this!" "Will you?" answered Ernie, truculent and cool. "Then I'll have my money's worth first." This heroic sentiment was loudly applauded by the crowd, who felt an added sympathy for Ern now they knew he was attacking his landlord, one of a class loathed by all good men. Just then Joe Burt emerged from the crowd and took the tumultuous figure of Ernie in his arms. "Coom, then!" he said. "This'll never do for a Labour Leader. This isna the Highway you should be trampin along." The crowd protested. It was an exhilarating scene--better than the pictures, some opined. And here was a blighter, who talked funny talk, interfering. "Just like these hem furriners," said an old man. "Ca-a-n't let well a-be." Then, happily, or unhappily, the police, who exist to spoil the people's fun, appeared on the scene. They made a little blue knot round Ernie, who stood in the midst of them, stripped and dripping, with something of the forlorn look of a shorn ewe that has just been dipped. Alf, secure now in the presence of the officers of the law, descended from his window and came down the steps of his house towards the growing crowd. A tall man joined him. The pair forced their way through the press to the police. "I'm Captain Royal," said the tall man, coldly. "I saw what happened." Joe turned on the new-comer. His clothes, his class, a touch of insolence about his tone and bearing, roused all the combative instincts of the engineer. "You wasn't standin by then!" he said ferociously. "You only just come up. A saw you." The other ignored him, drawing a card from an elegant case. "Here's my card," he said to the police. "If you want my evidence you'll know where to find me." Joe boiled over. "That's the gentleman of England touch!" he sneered. "Swear away a workin man's life for the price of half a pint, they would!" "Ah! I know him!" muttered Ernie, white still, and trembling. "Enough of it now," growled a big policeman, making notes in his pocket-book.