he had the power, and he was resolved to try, to carry
the dangerous mass out of mischief till the military came to awe them - which he
supposed, from Mr Crow's announcement long ago, must be a near event.
    He was followed the more willingly, because Tiliot's Lane was seen by the
hindmost to be now defended by constables, some of whom had fire-arms; and where
there is no strong counter-movement, any proposition to do something unspecified
stimulates stupid curiosity. To many of the Sproxton men who were within sight
of him, Felix was known personally, and vaguely believed to be a man who meant
many queer things, not at all of an every-day kind. Pressing along like a
leader, with the sabre in his hand, and inviting them to bring on Spratt, there
seemed a better reason for following him than for doing anything else. A man
with a definite will and an energetic personality acts as a sort of flag to draw
and bind together the foolish units of a mob. It was on this sort of influence
over men whose mental state was a mere medley of appetites and confused
impressions, that Felix had dared to count. He hurried them along with words of
invitation, telling them to hold up Spratt and not drag him; and those behind
followed him, with a growing belief that he had some design worth knowing, while
those in front were urged along partly by the same notion, partly by the sense
that there was a motive in those behind them, not knowing what the motive was.
It was that mixture of pushing forward and being pushed forward, which is a
brief history of most human things.
    What Felix really intended to do, was to get the crowd by the nearest way
out of the town, and induce them to skirt it on the north side with him, keeping
up in them the idea that he was leading them to execute some strategem by which
they would surprise something worth attacking, and circumvent the constables who
were defending the lanes. In the meantime he trusted that the soldiers would
have arrived, and with this sort of mob, which was animated by no real political
passion or fury against social distinctions, it was in the highest degree
unlikely that there would be any resistance to a military force. The presence of
fifty soldiers would probably be enough to scatter the rioting hundreds. How
numerous the mob was, no one ever knew: many inhabitants afterwards were ready
to swear that there must have been at least two thousand rioters. Felix knew he
was incurring great risks; but his blood