He finished on a note that was almost a scream, and they looked at him aghast and dumfoundered. It was his face that held them even more than his disconcerting words—all but Edgar Jay-Blenkinsop, who, pricked in his vanity, would have accepted the challenge and started again had not Faraday silenced him with a turn of the head and a gesture. Still more pricked in his vanity he slid to a chair, muttering sulkily and red to the neck. "Tully——" began Faraday with reproof in his voice—but Tully defied even his mentor. Not savagely and with contempt, as he had defied and decried Jay-Blenkinsop, but as one who had a right to be heard. "He mustn’t talk like that till he knows something. It’s child’s talk—ridiculous babble. I know what I’m saying—I’ve come from it—and I’ve a right to tell him what I know. Not one of you here has seen what I have—you’re just guessing. When a shell bursts ... I’ve seen a man with his legs like red jelly and a horse..." he choked at the memory. "That’s being a soldier—let him fight and he’ll find it out. Now he thinks it’s what he said just now—a sort of game that they like. Everything he said was mean little nonsense—how dare you listen to it and laugh at his silly little jokes? What’s the good of saying that it shouldn’t happen? Of course it shouldn’t happen—we all know that—of course it shouldn’t happen, but it does. And you can’t stop it with sneers about soldiers and Kitchener.... It’s hell and the mouth of hell—I’ve seen it. He says he wouldn’t lift a finger to keep them out. Do you know why he says that? It’s because he can’t imagine what it means. I would. I’d die to keep them out, because I’ve seen ... I’ve seen a man shot—not a soldier, just an ordinary man—put against a wall and shot while his wife howled like a dog. Two men—and their wives standing by. They might do that to him if they came—has he ever thought of that?—while his mother howled like a dog." He shot out a quivering finger at the open-mouthed Mrs. Jay-Blenkinsop. "And his women—would he let them do as they liked with his women? They would if they came here—he can take my word for it they would. Would he ask them in politely and shake hands and give them drinks and let them? ... If they came, people would run from them, leaving everything they had—beggars. Would he like to be driven and beaten and made to work like a slave? I’ve had that—I’ve been driven and beaten and made to work. And I’ve run from them and starved and hidden because I was afraid. And my wife died—they killed her——"