s paused, seemingly to measure the
distance and force of the stroke, thus lending to their act a more
terrible and deliberate significance. A shout of triumph announced that
the gates, like a broken dam, had given way, and the torrent poured in
between the posts, flooding the yard, pressing up the towered stairways
and spreading through the compartments of the mill. More ominous than the
tumult seemed the comparative silence that followed this absorption of
the angry spirits of the mob. Little by little, as the power was shut
off, the antiphonal throbbing of the looms was stilled. Pinioned against
the parapet above the canal--almost on that very spot where, the first
evening, she had met Ditmar--Janet awaited her chance to cross. Every
crashing window, every resounding blow on the panels gave her a fierce
throb of joy. She had not expected the gates to yield--her father must
have insecurely fastened them. Gaining the farther side of the canal, she
perceived him flattened against the wall of the gatehouse shaking his
fist in the faces of the intruders, who rushed past him unheeding. His
look arrested her. His face was livid, his eyes were red with anger, he
stood transformed by a passion she had not believed him to possess. She
had indeed heard him give vent to a mitigated indignation against
foreigners in general, but now the old-school Americanism in which he had
been bred, the Americanism of individual rights, of respect for the
convention of property, had suddenly sprung into flame. He was ready to
fight for it, to die for it. The curses he hurled at these people sounded
blasphemous in Janet's ears.

"Father!" she cried. "Father!"

He looked at her uncomprehendingly, seemingly failing to recognize her.

"What are you doing here?" he demanded, seizing her and attempting to
draw her to the wall beside him. But she resisted. There sprang from her
lips an unpremeditated question: "Where is Mr. Ditmar?" She was, indeed,
amazed at having spoken it.

"I don't know," Edward replied distractedly. "We've been looking for him
everywhere. My God, to think that this should happen with me at the
gates!" he lamented. "Go home, Janet. You can't tell what'll happen, what
these fiends will do, you may get hurt. You've got no business here."
Catching sight of a belated and breathless policeman, he turned from her
in desperation. "Get 'em out! Far God's sake, can't you get 'em out
before they ruin the machines?"

But Janet waited n