ise at finding her there, calling
her by name. She clung to his sleeve, and again she asked the question:--

"Where's Mr. Ditmar?"

Caldwell shook his head. His answer was the same as Edward's. "I don't
know," he shouted excitedly above the noise. "We've got to get this mob
out before they do any damage."

He tore himself away, she saw him expostulating with the overseer, and
then she went on. These tower stairs, she remembered, led to a yard
communicating by a little gate with the office entrance. The door of the
vestibule was closed, but the watchman, Simmons, recognizing her,
permitted her to enter. The offices were deserted, silent, for the bells
and the siren had ceased their clamour; the stenographers and clerks had
gone. The short day was drawing to a close, shadows were gathering in the
corners of Ditmar's room as she reached the threshold and gazed about her
at the objects there so poignantly familiar. She took off her coat. His
desk was littered with books and papers, and she started, mechanically,
to set it in order, replacing the schedule books on the shelves, sorting
out the letters and putting them in the basket. She could not herself
have told why she should take up again these trivial tasks as though no
cataclysmic events had intervened to divide forever the world of
yesterday from that of to-morrow. With a movement suggestive of
tenderness she was picking up Ditmar's pen to set it in the glass rack
when her ear caught the sound of voices, and she stood transfixed,
listening intently. There were footsteps in the corridor, the voices came
nearer; one, loud and angered, she detected above the others. It was
Ditmar's! Nothing had happened to him! Dropping the pen, she went over to
the window, staring out over the grey waters, trembling so violently that
she could scarcely stand.

She did not look around when they entered the room Ditmar, Caldwell,
Orcutt, and evidently a few watchmen and overseers. Some one turned on
the electric switch, darkening the scene without. Ditmar continued to
speak in vehement tones of uncontrolled rage.

"Why in hell weren't those gates bolted tight?" he demanded. "That's what
I want to know! There was plenty of time after they turned the corner of
East Street. You might have guessed what they would do. But instead of
that you let 'em into the mill to shut off the power and intimidate our
own people." He called the strikers an unprintable name, and though Janet
stood, with h