mingly
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 no longer. Pu