ough lot, with
no respect 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 sha