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. Pushing her way frantically through the
people filling the yard she climbed the tower stairs and made her way
into one of the spinning rooms. The frames were stilled, the overseer and
second hands, thrust aside, looked on helplessly while the intruders
harangued, cajoled or threatened the operatives, some of whom were cowed
and already departing; others, sullen and resentful, remained standing in
the aisles; and still others seemed to have caught the contagion of the
strike. Suddenly, with reverberating strokes, the mill bells rang out,
the electric gongs chattered, the siren screeched, drowning the voices.
Janet did not pause, but hurried from room to room until, in passing
through an open doorway in the weaving department she ran into Mr.
Caldwell. He halted a moment, in surpr