The greater number of the crowd were, however, excitable, good-natured
men, who were by instinct friendly, save when their prejudices were
excited; and their oaths and exclamations were marvels of droll
ingenuity. Most of them were still too good-humoured with drink to be
dangerous, but all hoped for trouble at the Orange funeral on principle,
and the anticipated strike had elements of "thrill." They were of a
class, however, who would swing from what was good-humour to deadly anger
in a minute, and turn a wind of mere prejudice into a hurricane of life
and death with the tick of a clock. They would all probably go to the
Orange funeral to-morrow in a savage spirit. Some of them were loud in
denunciation of Ingolby and "the Lebanon gang"; they joked coarsely over
the dead Orangeman, but their cheerful violence had not yet the
appearance of reality.
One man suddenly changed all that. He was a river-driver of stalwart
proportions, with a red handkerchief round his neck, and with loose
corded trousers tucked into his boots. He had a face of natural ugliness
made almost repulsive by marks of smallpox. Red, flabby lips and an
overhanging brow made him a figure which men would avoid on a dark night.
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