from the rear was
relaxed, the throng in Faber Street began a retreat in the direction of
the power plant. Down that street, now in double time, came three
companies of Boston militia, newly arrived in Hampton, blue-taped,
gaitered, slouch-hatted. From columns of fours they wheeled into line,
and with bayonets at charge slowly advanced. Then the boldest of the mob,
who still lingered, sullenly gave way, West Street was cleared, and on
the wider thoroughfare the long line of traffic, the imprisoned trolleys
began to move again....

Janet had wedged herself into the press far enough to gain a view down
West Street of the warehouse roofs, to see the water turned on, to hear
the screams and the curses and then the shots. Once more she caught the
contagious rage of the mob; the spectacle had aroused her to fury; it
seemed ignominious, revolting that human beings, already sufficiently
miserable, should be used thus. As she retreated reluctantly across the
car tracks her attention was drawn to a man at her side, a Slovak. His
face was white and pinched, his clothes were wet. Suddenly he stopped,
turned and shook his fist at the line of soldiers.

"The Cossack, the politzman belong to the boss, the capitalist!" he
cried. "We ain't got no right to live. I say, kill the capitalist--kill
Ditmar!"

A man with a deputy's shield ran toward them.

"Move on!" he said brutally. "Move on, or I'll roil you in." And Janet,
once clear of the people, fled westward, the words the foreigner had
spoken ringing in her ears. She found herself repeating them aloud, "Kill
Ditmar!" as she hurried through the gathering dusk past the power house
with its bottle-shaped chimneys, and crossed the little bridge over the
stream beside the chocolate factory. She gained the avenue she had trod
with Eda on that summer day of the circus. Here was the ragpicker's shop,
the fence covered with bedraggled posters, the deserted grand-stand of
the base-ball park spread with a milky-blue mantle of snow; and beyond,
the monotonous frame cottages all built from one model. Now she descried
looming above her the outline of Torrey's Hill blurred and melting into a
darkening sky, and turned into the bleak lane where stood the
Franco-Belgian Hall--Hampton Headquarters of the Industrial Workers of
the World. She halted a moment at sight of the crowd of strikers
loitering in front of it, then went on again, mingling with them
excitedly beside the little building. Its line