A score of raging miners came upon him from every side, dragging, tearing, beating, kicking, cursing, yelling.

He was down in a moment, then soon up again, then dragged out of the room, nails, fists, and heavy boots all going, stripped to the shirt, screaming like a woman.

A dozen assailants rolled down the steps, with him in the midst of them.

He got clear for a moment, but twenty more rushed at him, and again he was torn and battered and kicked.

"Police! police!" he cried; and at last the detectives who came to seize him rushed in, and Colonel Clifford, too, with the voice of a stentor, cried, "The law! Respect the law, or you are ruined men." And so at last the law he had so dreaded raised what seemed a bag of bones: nothing left on him but one boot and fragments of a shirt, ghastly, bleeding, covered with bruises, insensible, and to all appearance dead.
After a short consultation, they carried him, by Colonel Clifford's order, to the Dun Cow, where Lucy, it may be remembered, was awaiting his triumphant return..