ppened 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 her back turned, directly before him, he
gave no sign of being aware of her presence.

"It wasn't the gatekeeper's fault," she heard Orcutt reply in a tone
quivering with excitement and apprehension. "They really didn't give
us a chance--that's the truth. They were down Canal Street and over the
bridge before we knew it."

"It's just as I've said a hundred times," Ditmar retorted. "I can't
afford to leave this mill a minute, I can't trust anybody--" and he
broke out in another tirade against the intruders. "By God, I'll fix 'em
for this--I'll crush 'em. And if any operatives try to walkout here I'll
see that they starve before they get back--after all I've done for 'em,
kept the mill going in slack times just to give 'em work. If they desert
me now, when I've got this Bradlaugh order on my hands--" Speech became
an inadequate expression of his feelings, and suddenly his eye fell on
Janet. She had turned, but her look made no impression on him. "Call up
the Chief of Police," he said.

Automatically she obeyed, getting the connection and handing him
the receiver, standing by while he denounced the incompetence of the
department for permitting the mob to gather in East Street and demanded
deputies. The veins of his forehead were swollen as he cut short the
explanations of the official and asked for the City Hall. In making an
appointment with the Mayor he reflected on the management of the city
government. And when Janet by his command obtained the Boston office, he
gave the mill treasurer a heated account of the afternoon's occurrences,
explaining circumstantially how, in his absence at a conference in the
Patuxent Mill, the mob had gathered in Eas