“I’ll be up yon, to-morra morning,” said the little man.

Myatt nodded and departed.  Charlie, the little man, turned on his heel and proudly rejoined the crowd.  He had been seen of all in converse with supreme greatness.

Stirling and I also retired; and though Jos Myatt had not even done his doctor the honour of seeing him, neither of us, I think, was quite without a consciousness of glory:  I cannot imagine why.  The rest of the game was flat and tame.  Nothing occurred.  The match ended in a draw.

IV

We were swept from the football ground on a furious flood of humanity—­carried forth and flung down a slope into a large waste space that separated the ground from the nearest streets of little reddish houses.  At the bottom of the slope, on my suggestion, we halted for a few moments aside, while the current rushed forward and, spreading out, inundated the whole space in one marvellous minute.  The impression of the multitude streaming from that gap in the wooden wall was like nothing more than the impression of a burst main which only the emptying of the reservoir will assuage.  Anybody who wanted to commit suicide might have stood in front of that gap and had his wish.  He would not have been noticed.  The interminable and implacable infantry charge would have passed unheedingly over him.  A silent, preoccupied host, bent on something else now, and perhaps teased by the inconvenient thought that after all a draw is not as good as a win!  It hurried blindly, instinctively outwards, knees and chins protruding, hands deep in pockets, chilled feet stamping.  Occasionally someone stopped or slackened to light a pipe, and on being curtly bunted onward by a blind force from behind, accepted the hint as an atom accepts the law of gravity.  The fever and ecstasy were over.  What fascinated the Southern in me was the grim taciturnity, the steady stare (vacant or dreaming), and the heavy, muffled, multitudinous tramp shaking the cindery earth.  The flood continued to rage through the gap.

Our automobile had been left at the Haycock Hotel; we went to get it, braving the inundation.  Nearly opposite the stable-yard the electric trams started for Hanbridge, Bursley and Turnhill, and for Longshaw.  Here the crowd was less dangerous, but still very formidable—­to my eyes.  Each tram as it came up was savagely assaulted, seized, crammed and possessed, with astounding rapidity.  Its steps were the western bank of a Beresina.  At a given moment the inured conductor, brandishing his leather-shielded arm with a pitiless gesture, thrust aspirants down into the mud and the tram rolled powerfully away.  All this in silence.

After a few minutes a bicyclist swished along through the mud, taking the far side of the road, which was comparatively free.  He wore grey trousers, heavy boots, and a dark cut-away coat, up the back of which a line of caked mud had deposited itself.  On his head was a bowler hat.