t or consideration for decent folks--these foreigners. I never
could see why the government lets 'em all come over here." He put on the
word "foreigners" an emphasis of contempt and indignation, pathetic
because of its peculiar note of futility. Janet paid no attention to him.
Her ears were strained to catch the rumble of feet descending the tower
stairs, her eyes to see the vanguard as it came from the doorway--the
first tricklings of a flood that instantly filled the yard and swept
onward and outward, irresistibly, through the narrow gorge of the gates.
Impossible to realize this as the force which, when distributed over the
great spaces of the mills, performed an orderly and useful task! for it
was now a turbid and lawless torrent unconscious of its swollen powers,
menacing, breathlessly exciting to behold. It seemed to Janet indeed a
torrent as she clung to the side of the gatehouse as one might cling to
the steep bank of a mountain brook after a cloud-burst. And suddenly she
had plunged into it. The desire was absurd, perhaps, but not to be
denied,--the desire to mix with it, feel it, be submerged and swept away
by it, losing all sense of identity. She heard her father call after her,
faintly--the thought crossed her mind that his appeals were always
faint,--and then she was being carried along the canal, eastward, the
pressure relaxing somewhat when the draining of the side streets began.

She remembered, oddly, the Stanley Street bridge where the many streams
met and mingled, streams from the Arundel, the Patuxent, the Arlington
and the Clarendon; and, eager to prolong and intensify her sensations,
hurried thither, reaching it at last and thrusting her way outward until
she had gained the middle, where she stood grasping the rail. The great
structure was a-tremble from the assault, its footpaths and its roadway
overrun with workers, dodging between trolleys and trucks,--some darting
nimbly, dinner pails in hand, along the steel girders. Doffer boys romped
and whistled, young girls in jaunty, Faber Street clothes and flowered
hats, linked to one another for protection, chewed gum and joked, but for
the most part these workers were silent, the apathy of their faces making
a strange contrast with the hurry, hurry of their feet and set intentness
of their bodies as they sped homeward to the tenements. And the clothes
of these were drab, save when the occasional colour of a hooded peasant's
shawl, like the slightly fade