But, whilst the majority were thus willing to listen and anxious to understand, there was also a bitterly hostile element which was inflamed by an absolutely unreasoning spirit of party antagonism, and it was well known, and quite openly stated in Oakham, that a certain well-to-do Liberal was paying a gang of youths to shout down the Suffragettes at their nightly meetings in the market place. It is always found by those who take part in political warfare that the roughest and least civilised members of society are invariably opposed to the pioneer and the reformer and usually support the Government in power, to whatever party it may belong, just as they try to "back the winner" in a race. With the additional monetary incentive to create a disturbance, this element soon rendered our market place meetings unpleasantly turbulent, with the result that the local police were kept busier than they had been for a generation, and reinforcements had to be sent in from Leicestershire in order to keep the peace. The tradesman from whom we hired the lorry that we used as a platform, now announced that he dared not let us have it in future because he had been warned, not only that the vehicle itself would be damaged, but that his windows would be broken and his shop looted. Not until we had tried without success every lorry owner in Oakham, did a man, who was storing a waggon for a farmer living many miles outside the constituency, at last come to us and say that, if we would go to the barn in the field where it was kept and fetch it out for ourselves, we might have the use of this waggon on promising to make good any damage that might be done. We agreed to this and were able to hold our meetings right on until the end of the contest, though on the last two nights very little that we said could be heard, owing to the number of horns, bells and rattles that were loudly sounded by our opponents. After these stormy meetings the police and hosts of sympathisers always escorted us home to protect us from the rowdies. Just as we reached our door there was generally a little scuffle with a band of youths who waited there to pelt us with sand and gravel as we passed in. Once inside the house, the rest of the evening was always taken up with interviewing the host of previously unknown callers, who came to ask whether we had arrived home safely, to apologise for the roughs, to express sympathy with "Votes for Women," to buy literature, badges and buttons, or to ask us to inscribe our names in autograph albums. At Uppingham, the second largest town, the hostile element was smaller than at Oakham, but its methods were more dangerous. Whilst Mary Gawthorpe was holding an open-air meeting there one evening, a crowd of noisy youths began to throw up peppermint "bull's eyes" and other hard-boiled sweets. "Sweets to the sweet," said little Mary, smiling, and continued her argument, but a pot-egg, thrown from the crowd behind, struck her on the head and she fell unconscious.