Eight minutes had been lost over a broken leg, but Stirling said that
the referee would surely deduct them from the official time, so that
after all the game would not be shortened.

"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