that not one man but a gang were fighting their way through, and at the thought those on the outside began to heave and push and make the pressure in the centre more intense. In this desperate jam cries of fear and distress arose. Hugh at the very centre had succumbed, battered and squeezed into insensibility; but because of his drooping head and closed eyes no one near him realized it, and whoever could get a fist free pounded him with hearty hatred.
From the steps of the company's building where he overlooked the mob, Gregg was shouting that the mills were not to be started, that no one was going to work; but his protests were unheard and unheeded. He came down from the steps and got into the crowd, shouting and appealing, but quite without avail. Only when the pressure had grown violent beyond endurance and agonized cries rose from all quarters was there a gradual yielding; in this slow loosening of the crowd Gregg was unaware that three men had sunk lifeless to the ground. Two of them were small and weak old men who had fainted under the crushing; their friends carried them away to their homes while the superintendent was haranguing the crowd on its folly.
During this time a group stood close round Farrell, concealing him from Gregg's view. He was not dead, and they were uncertain what to do with him; they were none of them disposed to take him home and face his wife. But when the superintendent had finished, they lifted Farrell and under cover of the dispersing crowd bore him down the street a little way; a milk-wagon had stopped by the curb, and they laid him in this and told the driver, a boy, that he had been hurt in the jam, that they did not know who he was, and that he ought to be taken to the hospital. The boy, eager to be of use, drove off at once and delivered the patient. By the time he had done this, the mob at the mill gates—all except the usual force of pickets—had dispersed.
