Early that morning Derek had assembled twenty of the strongest laborers, and taken them a round of the farms to force the strike-breakers to desist.  There had been several fights, in all of which the strike-breakers had been beaten.  Derek himself had fought three times.  In the afternoon the police had come, and the laborers had rushed with Derek and Sheila, who had joined them, into a barn at Marrow Farm, barred it, and thrown mangolds at the police, when they tried to force an entrance.  One by one the laborers had slipped away by a rope out of a ventilation-hole high up at the back, and they had just got Sheila down when the police appeared on that side, too.  Derek, who had stayed to the last, covering their escape with mangolds, had jumped down twenty feet when he saw them taking Sheila, and, pitching forward, hit his head against a grindstone.  Then, just as they were marching Sheila and two of the laborers away, Tod had arrived and had fallen in alongside the policemen—­he and the dog.  It was then she had seen that look on his face.

Felix, who had never beheld his big brother in Berserk mood, could offer no consolation; nor had he the heart to adorn the tale, and inflict on this poor woman his reflection:  ’This, you see, is what comes of the ferment you have fostered.  This is the reward of violence!’ He longed, rather, to comfort her; she seemed so lonely and, in spite of all her stoicism, so distraught and sad.  His heart went out, too, to Tod.  How would he himself have felt, walking by the side of policemen whose arms were twisted in Nedda’s!  But so mixed are the minds of men that at this very moment there was born within him the germ of a real revolt against the entry of his little daughter into this family of hotheads.  It was more now than mere soreness and jealousy; it was fear of a danger hitherto but sniffed at, but now only too sharply savored.

When she left him to go up-stairs, Felix stayed consulting the dark night.  As ever, in hours of ebbed vitality, the shapes of fear and doubt grew clearer and more positive; they loomed huge out there among the apple-trees, where the drip-drip of the rain made music.  But his thoughts were still nebulous, not amounting to resolve.  It was no moment for resolves—­with the boy lying up there between the tides of chance; and goodness knew what happening to Tod and Sheila.  The air grew sharper; he withdrew to the hearth, where a wood fire still burned, gray ash, red glow, scent oozing from it.  And while he crouched there, blowing it with bellows, he heard soft footsteps, and saw Nedda standing behind him transformed.

But in the midst of all his glad sympathy Felix could not help thinking:  ’Better for you, perhaps, if he had never returned from darkness!’

She came and crouched down by him.

“Let me sit with you, Dad.  It smells so good.”

“Very well; but you must sleep.”

“I don’t believe I’ll ever want to sleep again.”