ou my good!"

That same night Hitt's wells burned. And that night the master slept
not, but sat alone at his desk in the great Fifth Avenue mansion, and
plotted the annihilation of every human being who had dared oppose his
worldly ambitions. Plotted, too, the further degradation and final
ruin of the girl who had dared to say she loved him, and yet would not
become his toy.

* * * * *

There is no need to curse the iniquitous industrial and social system
upon which the unstable fabric of our civilization rests, for that
system is its own fell curse in the rotting fruit it bears. A bit of
that poisonous fruit had now dropped from the slimy branch at Avon. Up
from the yards came the militiamen at double-quick, with rifles
unslung and loaded with the satanic Ames bullets. Behind them they
dragged two machine guns, capable of discharging three hundred times a
minute. The mob had concentrated upon the central building of the mill
group, and had just gained entrance through its shattered doors.
Before them the guards were falling slowly back, fighting every inch
of the way. The dead lay in heaps. The air was thick with powder
smoke. One end of the building was in flames. The roar of battle was
deafening.

Quickly swinging into action, the militia opened upon the mill hands.
Hemmed in between two fires, the mob broke and fled down the frozen
stream. The officers of the guard then ordered their men to join in
the work of extinguishing the flames, which were beginning to make
headway, fanned by the strong draft which swept through the long
building. Until dawn they fought the stubborn fire. Then, the building
saved, they pitched their tents and sought a brief rest.

At noon the soldiers were again assembled, for there remained the task
of arresting the leaders of the mob and bringing them to justice. The
town had been placed under martial law with the arrival of the
militia. Its streets were patrolled by armed guards, and a strong
cordon had been thrown around the shacks which the mill hands had
hastily erected the afternoon before. And now, under the protection of
a detachment of soldiers, the demand was made for the unconditional
surrender of the striking laborers.

Dull terror lay like a pall over the miserable shacks huddled along
the dead stream. It was the dull, hopeless, numbing terror of the
victim who awaits the blow from the lion's paw in the arena. Weeping
wives and m