But the officer turned a deaf ear.
"Go to the devil, you old hag," he half muttered as he stared round upon the scattered company.
Now the stones were off, and Hurstwood took his place again amid a continued chorus of epithets.Both officers got up beside him and the conductor rang the bell, when, bang! bang! through window and door came rocks and stones.One narrowly grazed Hurstwood's head.Another shattered the window behind.
"Throw open your lever," yelled one of the officers, grabbing at the handle himself.
Hurstwood complied and the car shot away, followed by a rattle of stones and a rain of curses.
"That --- --- --- ---- hit me in the neck," said one of the officers."I gave him a good crack for it, though."
"I think I must have left spots on some of them," said the other.
"I know that big guy that called us a --- --- --- ----" said the first."I'll get him yet for that."
"I thought we were in for it sure, once there," said the second.
Hurstwood, warmed and excited, gazed steadily ahead.It was an astonishing experience for him.He had read of these things, but the reality seemed something altogether new.He was no coward in spirit.The fact that he had suffered this much now rather operated to arouse a stolid determination to stick it out.He did not recur in thought to New York or the flat.This one trip seemed a consuming thing.
They now ran into the business heart of Brooklyn uninterrupted.
People gazed at the broken windows of the car and at Hurstwood in his plain clothes.Voices called "scab" now and then, as well as other epithets, but no crowd attacked the car.At the downtown end of the line, one of the officers went to call up his station and report the trouble.
"There's a gang out there," he said, "laying for us yet.Better send some one over there and clean them out."
The car ran back more quietly--hooted, watched, flung at, but not attacked.Hurstwood breathed freely when he saw the barns.