s, were focusing at different points in the open country.
The state police had been fired at from ambush, and two of them had been
killed. They had ridden into and dispersed various gatherings in the
darkness, but only to have them re-form in other places. The enemy was
still shadowy, elusive; it was apparently saving its ammunition. It
did little shooting, but reports of the firing of farmhouses and of
buildings in small, unprotected towns began to come in rapidly.

In a short time the messages began to be more significant, indicating
that the groups were coalescing and that a revolutionary army, with the
city its objective, was coming down the river, evidently making for the
bridge at Chester Street.

"They've lighted a fire they can't put out," was Howard's comment. His
mouth was very dry and his face twitching, for he saw, behind the frail
barrier of the Chester Street bridge, the quiet houses of the city, the
sleeping children. He saw Grace and Lily, and Elinor. He was among the
first to reach the river front.

All through the dawn volunteers labored at the bridge head. Members
of the Vigilance Committee, policemen and firemen, doctors, lawyers,
clerks, shop-keepers, they looted the river wharves with willing,
unskillful hands. They turned coal wagons on their sides, carried
packing cases and boxes, and, under the direction of men who wore the
Legion button, built skillfully and well. Willy Cameron toiled with
the others. He lifted and pulled and struggled, and in the midst of
his labor he had again that old dream of the city. The city was a vast
number of units, and those units were homes. Behind each of those men
there was, somewhere, in some quiet neighborhood, a home. It was for
their homes they were fighting, for the right of children to play in
peaceful streets, for the right to go back at night to the rest they had
earned by honest labor, for the right of the hearth, of lamp-light and
sunlight, of love, of happiness.

Then, in the flare of a gasoline torch, he came face to face with Louis
Akers. The two men confronted each other, silently, with hostility.
Neither moved aside, but it was Akers who spoke first.

"Always busy, Cameron," he said. "What'd the world do without you,
anyhow?"

"Aren't you on the wrong side of this barricade?"

"Smart as ever," Akers observed, watching him intently. "As it happens,
I'm here because I want to be, and because I can't get where I ought to
be."

For a furious m