r.

On the fifteenth of July it held an incendiary meeting on the unused
polo field, and the next day awakened to the sound of hammers, and
to find a high wooden fence, reenforced with barbed wire, being built
around the field, with the state police on guard over the carpenters. In
a few days the fence was finished, only to be partly demolished the next
night, secretly and noiselessly. But no further attempts were made to
hold meetings there. It was rumored that meetings were being secretly
held in the woods near the town, but the rendezvous was not located.

On the restored fence around the polo grounds a Red flag was found one
morning, and two nights later the guard at the padlocked gate was shot
through the heart, from ambush.

Then, about the first of August, out of a clear sky, sporadic riotings
began to occur. They seemed to originate without cause, and to end as
suddenly as they began. Usually they were in the outlying districts,
but one or two took place in the city itself. The rioters were not
all foreign strikers from the mills. They were garment workers, hotel
waiters, a rabble of the discontented from all trades. The riots were to
no end, apparently. They began with a chance word, fought their furious
way for an hour or so, and ended, leaving a trail of broken heads and
torn clothing behind them.

On toward the end of July one such disturbance grew to considerable
size. The police were badly outnumbered, and a surprising majority of
the rioters were armed, with revolvers, with wooden bludgeons, lengths
of pipe and short, wicked iron bars. Things were rather desperate until
the police found themselves suddenly and mysteriously reenforced by
a cool-headed number of citizens, led by a tall thin man who limped
slightly, and who disposed his heterogeneous support with a few words
and considerable skill.

The same thin young man, stopping later in an alley way to investigate
an arm badly bruised by an iron bar, overheard a conversation between
two roundsmen, met under a lamppost after the battle, for comfort and a
little conversation.

"Can you beat that, Henry?" said one. "Where the hell'd they come from?"

"Search me," said Henry. "D'you see the skinny fellow? Limped, too.
D'you notice that? Probably hurt in France. But he hasn't forgotten how
to fight, I'll tell the world."

The outbreaks puzzled the leaders of the Vigilance Committee. Willy
Cameron was inclined to regard them as without direction or i