There was a shout of laughter. The ice was broken in good earnest. "Three cheers for Ben Hay! Three cheers and a tiger for Jack Darcy!" and amid all this hubbub the men and women, the boys and girls, rushed in pell-mell. A gladder crew one never saw. To decide when others doubt, to go forward boldly when others hesitate, to stand up for the principle of right when others have traduced and blackened it, to take the first step, is to be as heroic as the "six hundred" of deathless fame. They went to work with a will, though some were a little sore and doubtful, but they were carried on by the enthusiasm of the others. The street below was still blocked up, and there were yells and groans. Presently there came a shower of superannuated eggs. Two landed in Darcy's office-window. After that, a stampede of the riotous crew. Darcy sent Andrew, the bell-boy, to the police-station, and two men were detailed. The workmen were allowed to go home peaceably, except a little jeering at Keppler's. They heard then the trains had been stopped on the two roads leading out of Yerbury. The whole world seemed to be going crazy. Darcy and Cameron remained in the mill that night until almost ten: then the latter went home, and Darcy thought he would go for Ben Hay. The streets of Yerbury had presented a very peculiar aspect that evening, something like a beleaguered town. Groups of men and boys collected on the corners, or wended their way through the streets with low, ominous mutterings. People barred their doors and locked their windows, though it was a hot summer night. Some women were abroad: but they were of the rougher sort, and now and then their shrill voices rose on the air in derision or vituperation. Still there were no overt acts of violence, and at ten everybody began to breathe more freely. The coffee-house had been shut up that evening: it was deemed advisable. Darcy went round to the side-door, and was admitted. Hay and three other workmen were within. They had been figuring up possible and probable profits by the end of the five years, and looked very well satisfied. "There's a sort of hope and expectation about it," said one of the men, "that kind of stirs and warms a body. And when you come to count lost time, and fluctuation in wages, it makes a pretty even thing, after all! In '73 I worked in a shoddy-mill that _had_ been making money hand over fist,--eleven hours a day,--not a man of us made more than five dollars a week. Some poor fellows with families earned only three. You've never been as hard up as that! God only knows how they lived: it's beyond my guessing!"