When ther Primal Dark retreated,
       When ther deeps were undesigned,
     He with rule and level meted
       Habitation for mankind!

I saw sick envy on Bat’s face.  ‘Curse Nature,’ he muttered.  ’She gets ahead of you every time.  To think I forgot hymns and a harmonium!’

Then came the chorus: 

     Hear ther truth our tongues are telling,
       Spread ther light from shore to shore—­
     Oh, be faithful!  Oh, be truthful! 
       Earth is flat for evermore.

They sang several verses with the fervour of Christians awaiting their lions.  Then there were growlings in the air.  The sexton, embraced by the landlord, two-stepped out of the pub-door.  Each was trying to outroar the other.  ‘Apologising in advarnce for what he says,’ the landlord shouted:  ‘You’d better go away’ (here the sexton began to speak words).  ‘This isn’t the time nor yet the place for—­for any more o’ this chat.’

The crowd thickened.  I saw the village police-sergeant come out of his cottage buckling his belt.

‘But surely,’ said the woman at the harmonium, ’there must be some mistake.  We are not suffragettes.’

‘Damn it!  They’d be a change,’ cried the sexton.  ’You get out of this!  Don’t talk! I can’t stand it for one!  Get right out, or we’ll font you!’

The crowd which was being recruited from every house in sight echoed the invitation.  The sergeant pushed forward.  A man beside the reading-desk said:  ’But surely we are among dear friends and sympathisers.  Listen to me for a moment.’

It was the moment that a passing char-a-banc chose to strike into The Song.  The effect was instantaneous.  Bat, Ollyett, and I, who by divers roads have learned the psychology of crowds, retreated towards the tavern door.  Woodhouse, the newspaper proprietor, anxious, I presume, to keep touch with the public, dived into the thick of it.  Every one else told the Society to go away at once.  When the lady at the harmonium (I began to understand why it is sometimes necessary to kill women) pointed at the stencilled park pillars and called them ’the cromlechs of our common faith,’ there was a snarl and a rush.  The police-sergeant checked it, but advised the Society to keep on going.  The Society withdrew into the brake fighting, as it were, a rear-guard action of oratory up each step.  The collapsed harmonium was hauled in last, and with the perfect unreason of crowds, they cheered it loudly, till the chauffeur slipped in his clutch and sped away.  Then the crowd broke up, congratulating all concerned except the sexton, who was held to have disgraced his office by having sworn at ladies.  We strolled across the green towards Woodhouse, who was talking to the police-sergeant near the park-gates.  We were not twenty yards from him when we saw Sir Thomas Ingell emerge from the lodge and rush furiously at Woodhouse with an uplifted stick, at the same time shrieking:  ‘I’ll teach you to laugh, you—­’ but Ollyett has the record of the language.  By the time we reached them, Sir Thomas was on the ground; Woodhouse, very white, held the walking-stick and was saying to the sergeant: