ned to with
sympathy and respect--but nothing was done! The world had turned upside
down indeed if the City Government of Hampton refused to take the
advice of the agent of the Chippering Mill! American institutions were
a failure! But such was the fact. Some unnamed fear, outweighing their
dread of the retributions of Capital, possessed these men, made them
supine, derelict in the face of their obvious duty.

By the faint grey light of that bitter January morning Ditmar made his
way to the mill. In Faber Street dark figures flitted silently across
the ghostly whiteness of the snow, and gathered in groups on the
corners; seeking to avoid these, other figures hurried along the
sidewalks close to the buildings, to be halted, accosted, pleaded
with--threatened, perhaps. Picketing had already begun! The effect of
this pantomime of the eternal struggle for survivals which he at first
beheld from a distance, was to exaggerate appallingly the emptiness of
the wide street, to emphasize the absence of shoppers and vehicles; and
a bluish darkness lurked in the stores, whose plate glass windows were
frosted in quaint designs. Where were the police? It was not fear
that Ditmar felt, he was galvanized and dominated by anger, by an
overwhelming desire for action; physical combat would have brought him
relief, and as he quickened his steps he itched to seize with his own
hands these foreigners who had dared to interfere with his cherished
plans, who had had the audacity to challenge the principles of his
government which welcomed them to its shores. He would have liked to
wring their necks. His philosophy, too, was environmental. And beneath
this wrath, stimulating and energizing it the more, was the ache in his
soul from the loss for which he held these enemies responsible. Two days
ago happiness and achievement had both been within his grasp. The only
woman--so now it seemed--he had ever really wanted! What had become of
her? What obscure and passionate impulse had led her suddenly to defy
and desert him, to cast in her lot with these insensate aliens? A
hundred times during the restless, inactive hours of a sleepless night
this question had intruded itself in the midst of his scheming to
break the strike, as he reviewed, word by word, act by act, that almost
incomprehensible revolt of hers which had followed so swiftly--a final,
vindictive blow of fate--on that other revolt of the workers. At moments
he became confused, unable to s