After the first repulse of the crowd, Offitt, Bott, and a few more of the Bread-winners, together with some of the tramps and jail-birds who had come for plunder, gathered together across the street and agreed upon a diversion.  It was evident, they said, that Farnham had a considerable police force with him to protect his property; it was useless to waste any more time there; let the rest stay there and occupy the police; they could have more fun and more profit in some of the good houses in the neighborhood.  “Yes,” one suggested, “Jairus Belding’s widder lives just a step off.  Lots o’ silver and things.  Less go there.”

They slipped away in the confusion of the second rush, and made their way through the garden to Mrs. Belding’s.  They tried the door, and, finding it locked, they tore off the shutters and broke the windows, and made their way into the drawing-room, where Mrs. Belding and Alice were sitting.

They had been alarmed by the noise and tumult in front of Farnham’s house, and had locked and bolted their own doors in consequence.  Passing through the kitchen in their rounds, they found Ferguson there in conversation with the cook.  “Why, Fergus!” said the widow:  “why are you not at home?  They are having lively times over there, are they not?”

“Yes,” said the gardener; “but they have a plenty of men with arms, and I thought I’d e’en step over here and hearten up Bessie a bit.”

“I’m sure she ought to be very much obliged,” responded Mrs. Belding, dryly, though, to speak the truth, she was not displeased to have a man in the house, however little she might esteem his valor.

“I have no doubt he sneaked away from the fuss,” she said to Alice; “but I would rather have him in the kitchen than nothing.”

Alice assented.  “That is what they mean by moral support, I suppose.”

She spoke with a smile, but her heart was ill at ease.  The man she loved was, for all she knew, in deadly danger, and she could not show that she cared at all for him, for fear of showing that she cared too much.

“I am really anxious about Arthur Farnham,” continued Mrs. Belding.  “I hope he will not get himself into any scrape with those men.”

The tumult on the street and on the lawn had as yet presented itself to her in no worse light than as a labor demonstration, involving cheers and rude language.  “I am afraid he won’t be polite enough to them.  He might make them a little speech, complimenting Ireland and the American flag, and then they would go away.  That’s what your father did, in that strike on the Wabash.  It was in the papers at the time.  But these soldiers—­I’m afraid Arthur mayn’t be practical enough.”

“Fortunately, we are not responsible for him,” said Alice, whose heart was beating violently.

“Why, Alice! what a heartless remark!”

At this instant the windows came crashing in, and a half-dozen ruffians burst into the room.  Alice sprang, pale and silent, to the side of her mother, who sat, paralyzed with fright, in her rocking-chair.