wakening faces....

It chanced that an American, a college graduate, stood gazing down from a
point of vantage upon this scene. He was ignorant of anthropology,
psychology, and the phenomena of environment; but bits of "knowledge"
--which he embodied in a newspaper article composed that evening stuck
wax-like in his brain. Not thus, he deplored, was the Anglo-Saxon wont to
conduct his rebellions. These Czechs and Slavs, Hebrews and Latins and
Huns might have appropriately been clad in the skins worn by the hordes
of Attila. Had they not been drawn hither by the renown of the Republic's
wealth? And how essentially did they differ from those other barbarians
before whose bewildered, lustful gaze had risen the glittering palaces on
the hills of the Tiber? The spoils of Rome! The spoils of America! They
appeared to him ferocious, atavistic beasts as they broke into the
lumberyard beneath his window to tear the cord-wood from the piles and
rush out again, armed with billets....

Janet, in the main stream sweeping irresistibly down the middle of the
street, was carried beyond the lumberyard into the narrow roadway beside
the canal--presently to find herself packed in the congested mass in
front of the bridge that led to the gates of the Chippering Mill. Across
the water, above the angry hum of human voices could be heard the
whirring of the looms, rousing the mob to a higher pitch of fury. The
halt was for a moment only. The bridge rocked beneath the weight of their
charge, they battered at the great gates, they ran along the snow-filled
tracks by the wall of the mill. Some, in a frenzy of passion, hurled
their logs against the windows; others paused, seemingly 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