It's a heap of dung you won't lift with one toss of the pitchfork, I tell you!" Pavel was silent.

In front of him the huge black face of the crowd was rocking wildly, and fixed on him an importunate stare.

His heart beat in alarm.

It seemed to him as if all the words he had spoken vanished in the crowd without leaving any trace, like scattered drops of rain falling on parched soil.

One after the other, workmen approached him praising his speech, but doubting the success of a strike, and complaining how little the people understood their own interests and realized their own strength.
Pavel had a sense of injury and disappointment as to his own power.