It was beyond belief, to me, the spirit with which these words
were sung. In no sense with jollity--all that seemed to have been
dropped when they came to their feet--but with an unmistakable
fervour of faith. Some of the things I had thought and dreamed
about secretly among the hills of my farm all these years,
dreamed about as being something far off and as unrealizable as
the millennium, were here being sung abroad with jaunty faith by
these weavers of Kilburn, these weavers and workers whom I had
schooled myself to regard with a sort of distant pity.
Hardly had the company sat down again, with a renewal of the flow
of jolly conversation When I heard a rapping on one of the
tables. I saw the great form of R--- D--- slowly rising.
"Brothers and sisters," he said, "a word of caution. The
authorities will lose no chance of putting us in the wrong. Above
all we must comport ourselves here and in the strike with great
care. We are fighting a great battle, bigger than we are--"
At this instant the door from the dark hallway suddenly opened
and a man in a policeman's uniform stepped in. There fell an
instant's dead silence--an explosive silence. Every person there
seemed to be petrified in the position in which his attention was
attracted.
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