dly unhurried. It was not a
crowd that could be in any sense called a mob, and was perfectly
orderly, but it did not go fast enough to suit the police and a dozen of
them came trotting up. Their appearance wiped the smile away, and when
they began really roughing I heard the first murmurings of the snarl
which only an infuriated mob can produce. I wondered what the police
were up to. They were obviously provoking trouble. I felt then we might
be in for serious difficulties--and the attitude of the police gave me
the fear.

[Sidenote: Watching for the Cossacks to act.]

[Sidenote: A red flag.]

Friday morning only a few street cars were running, but the city was
quiet enough until after ten in the morning. Then the agitators, their
small following, and the onlookers, sure now of having a spectacle,
began gathering in considerable numbers. I was still expecting the rough
work to commence with the Cossacks, but after watching them from the
colonnades of the cathedral for half an hour I walked out through the
crowd and, shifted but slightly out of my route by the sway of the crowd
as Cossacks trotted up and down the street, crossed the thick of it.
Green student caps were conspicuous, and one of the students told me
the universities had gone on strike in sympathy with the bread
demonstration. As a company of Cossacks swung by, lances in rest, rifles
slung on their shoulders, I scanned their faces without finding anything
ferocious there. Some one waved a red flag, the first I had seen, before
them, but they passed, unnoticing.

[Sidenote: Crowd not yet dangerous.]

This time the crowd did not break up but began to bunch here and there
as far as the Fontanka Canal. All afternoon the Cossacks kept them
stirring, and occasionally the police gave them a real roughing. Each
time the police appeared, I heard that menacing murmur, but by Friday
evening, when the day's crowd disappeared, the increase in discontent
and anger had not developed sufficiently in twenty-four hours to be
really dangerous. I felt the Government still had plenty of time to
remove the discontent, and an announcement pasted up conspicuously
everywhere saying there would be no lack of bread seemed like an
assurance that the Government would somehow overnight provide all bakers
with sufficient flour. That was the one obvious thing to do.

[Sidenote: A tour of the Wiborg factory district.]

During the afternoon I made a long tour through the Wiborg facto