four-fold line of big men clad in blue, and across the southern
roadway the helmets of a band of horse-soldiers, dead white in the
greyness of the chilly November afternoon--I opened my eyes to the
sunlight again and looked round me, and cried out among the
whispering trees and odorous blossoms, "Trafalgar Square!"

"Yes," said Dick, who had drawn rein again, "so it is. I don't
wonder at your finding the name ridiculous: but after all, it was
nobody's business to alter it, since the name of a dead folly doesn't
bite. Yet sometimes I think we might have given it a name which
would have commemorated the great battle which was fought on the spot
itself in 1952,--that was important enough, if the historians don't
lie."

"Which they generally do, or at least did," said the old man. "For
instance, what can you make of this, neighbours? I have read a
muddled account in a book--O a stupid book--called James' Social
Democratic History, of a fight which took place here in or about the
year 1887 (I am bad at dates). Some people, says this story, were
going to hold a ward-mote here, or some such thing, and the
Government of London, or the Council, or the Commission, or what not
other barbarous half-hatched body of fools, fell upon these citizens
(as they were then called) with the armed hand. That seems too
ridiculous to be true; but according to this version of the story,
nothing much came of it, which certainly IS too ridiculous to be
true."

"Well," quoth I, "but after all your Mr. James is right so far, and
it IS true; except that there was no fighting, merely unarmed and
peaceable people attacked by ruffians armed with bludgeons."