After the declaration of the poll Mrs. Pankhurst and Mrs. Martel, the only members of the Suffragette band left in the storm centre of Newton Abbot, saw Captain Morrison Bell escorted from the Market Square by a strong force of police, and were themselves urged to hurry away and leave the town at once. The warning seemed to them absurd, and Mrs. Pankhurst laughingly said that she had never yet been afraid to trust herself in a crowd. Immediately afterwards she and her companion met a procession of young men and boys wearing the Liberal colours, who were hurrying from their work in the clay pits. As soon as they heard that the Liberal had been defeated, one of them pointed to Mrs. Pankhurst and Mrs. Martel: "Those women have done it." Then the whole crowd of them started running and from somewhere or other there came a shower of rotten eggs. The two women were completely taken by surprise, and, more anxious to avoid the eggs than the angry crowd, they rushed into a grocer's shop, whilst a big brewer's drayman, who had been standing by jumped into the doorway and fought their assailants off until they were safe. The men and boys outside howled as their prey escaped them, and the people to whom the shop belonged, though anxious to protect the women, cried out despairingly that the windows would be broken in. Mrs. Pankhurst at once said that she could not bear to be the cause of loss to those who had sheltered her, and at her own request she and Mrs. Martel were led through a back door and across a yard leading to a narrow lane behind, whence it was thought that they would be able to escape. As soon as the door had been shut upon them, their assailants who had guessed their movements came rushing up. Mrs. Martel was seized by one who caught her by the throat and began to beat her about the head, but in a flash the shopkeeper's wife had heard the noise and had opened the door again and, somehow or other, she and Mrs. Pankhurst had rescued Mrs. Martel and had dragged her into the yard. The door was shut and safely bolted in all haste, but just as it closed, a man struck Mrs. Pankhurst a heavy blow on the back of the head, and, as she staggered on the threshold, pulled her back and she was left outside. Then the men gave an angry shout, and one of them, seizing her by the collar of her coat and by her wrists, flung her to the ground. She caught a glimpse of them all rushing on her, then for a time she knew nothing until she felt the wet mud soaking through her clothes. There was a pause. As she lay there looking at them, she saw that they had all closed round her in a ring, and that in the centre was an empty barrel. "Are they going to put me into it?" The thought flashed through her mind. Hours seemed to pass as she watched them, all dressed in drab-coloured clothes, smeared with yellow clay, and every one wearing a red Liberal rosette. They all seemed to be puny half-grown youths,