Aaron's expression of contempt was sublime.
"There's nothing they could have done to you, sir. All the same, I only wish that your blow had killed him."
"Because wherever we go or move," he said, "there will always be the snake in the grass. He will be filled forever with a poisonous hatred for you. He will never dare to raise his hand against you to your face--he isn't that sort of man--but he'll have his stab before he's finished. He was born a sneak."
Maraton smiled carelessly as he bade them good night.
"The one thing in the world," he reminded them, "worse than having no friends, is to have no enemies."
Eight days later, Maraton delivered his preliminary address to the ironworkers of Sheffield, and at six o'clock the next morning the strike had been unanimously proclaimed. The columns of the daily newspapers, still hopelessly bound over to the interests of the capitalist, were full of solemn warnings against this new and disturbing force in English sociology. The _Daily Oracle_ alone paused to present a few words of appreciation of the splendid dramatic force wielded by this revolutionary.
"If this man is sincere," the Oracle declared, "the country needs him. If he is a charlatan, then for heaven's sake, even at the expense of all the laws that were ever framed, away with him! There is no man breathing to-day who is developing a more potent, a more wide-reaching influence upon the destinies of our country."
Maraton's first address had been delivered to a great multitude, but there was no building whose roof could cover the hordes of men who had made up their minds to hear his last words at Sheffield. From far and wide, the people came that night in countless streams. A platform had been arranged in the middle of the principal pleasure park of the town, and around this, from early in the afternoon, they began to take up their places. When night fell, so far as the eye could see, the ground was covered with a black mass of humanity. The multitude filled the park and crowded up the encircling streets. As the darkness deepened, they lit torches. Beyond, down in the valley and up on the hillside, were rows of lights and the flare of furnaces soon to be quenched. Even that little group of hard, unimaginative men who stood with Maraton upon the platform felt the strange thrill of the tense and swelling throng gathered together with this inspiring background.