Wilson’s carriage and pair were at the door, the horses with blue and white rosettes at their ears, which were the colours of the Wilson Coal-pits, well known, on many a football field.  At the avenue gate a crowd of some hundred pit-men and their wives gave a cheer as the carriage passed.  To the assistant it all seemed dream-like and extraordinary—­the strangest experience of his life, but with a thrill of human action and interest in it which made it passionately absorbing.  He lay back in the open carriage and saw the fluttering handkerchiefs from the doors and windows of the miners’ cottages.  Wilson had pinned a blue and white rosette upon his coat, and everybody knew him as their champion.  “Good luck, sir! good luck to thee!” they shouted from the roadside.  He felt that it was like some unromantic knight riding down to sordid lists, but there was something of chivalry in it all the same.  He fought for others as well as for himself.  He might fail from want of skill or strength, but deep in his sombre soul he vowed that it should never be for want of heart.

Mr. Fawcett was just mounting into his high-wheeled, spidery dogcart, with his little bit of blood between the shafts.  He waved his whip and fell in behind the carriage.  They overtook Purvis, the tomato-faced publican, upon the road, with his wife in her Sunday bonnet.  They also dropped into the procession, and then, as they traversed the seven miles of the high road to Croxley, their two-horsed, rosetted carriage became gradually the nucleus of a comet with a loosely radiating tail.  From every side-road came the miners’ carts, the humble, ramshackle traps, black and bulging, with their loads of noisy, foul-tongued, open-hearted partisans.  They trailed for a long quarter of a mile behind them—­cracking, whipping, shouting, galloping, swearing.  Horsemen and runners were mixed with the vehicles.  And then suddenly a squad of the Sheffield Yeomanry, who were having their annual training in those parts, clattered and jingled out of a field, and rode as an escort to the carriage.  Through the dust-clouds round him Montgomery saw the gleaming brass helmets, the bright coats, and the tossing heads of the chargers, the delighted brown faces of the troopers.  It was more dream-like than ever.

And then, as they approached the monstrous, uncouth line of bottle-shaped buildings which marked the smelting-works of Croxley, their long, writhing snake of dust was headed off by another but longer one which wound across their path.  The main road into which their own opened was filled by the rushing current of traps.  The Wilson contingent halted until the others should get past.  The iron-men cheered and groaned, according to their humour, as they whirled past their antagonist.  Rough chaff flew back and forwards like iron nuts and splinters of coal.  “Brought him up, then!” “Got t’ hearse for to fetch him back?” “Where’s t’ owd K-legs?” “Mon, mon, have thy photograph took—­’twill mind thee of what thou used to look!” “He fight?—­he’s nowt but a half-baked doctor!” “Happen he’ll doctor thy Croxley Champion afore he’s through wi’t.”