joined the troop of the Wolves, whether welcome or not.  Some hideous women, with tattered garments, who always seem to follow in the track of such people, accompanied them on this occasion, and, by their cries and fury, inflamed still more the general excitement.  One of them, tall, robust, with purple complexion, blood shot eyes, and toothless jaws, had a handkerchief over her head, from beneath which escaped her yellow, frowsy hair.  Over her ragged gown, she wore an old plaid shawl, crossed over her bosom, and tied behind her back.  This hag seemed possessed with a demon.  She had tucked up her half-torn sleeves; in one hand she brandished a stick, in the other she grasped a huge stone; her companions called her Ciboule (scullion).

This horrible hag exclaimed, in a hoarse voice:  “I’ll bite the women of the factory; I’ll make them bleed.”

The ferocious words were received with applause by her companions, and with savage cries of “Ciboule forever!” which excited her to frenzy.

Amongst the other leaders, was a small, dry pale man, with the face of a ferret, and a black beard all round the chin; he wore a scarlet Greek cap, and beneath his long blouse, perfectly new, appeared a pair of neat cloth trousers, strapped over thin boots.  This man was evidently of a different condition of life from that of the other persons in the troop; it was he, in particular, who ascribed the most irritating and insulting language to the workmen of the factory, with regard to the inhabitants of the neighborhood.  He howled a great deal, but he carried neither stick nor stone.  A full-faced, fresh-colored man, with a formidable bass voice, like a chorister’s, asked him:  “Will you not have a shot at those impious dogs, who might bring down the Cholera on the country, as the curate told us?”

“I will have a better shot than you,” said the little man, with a singular, sinister smile.

“And with what, I’d like to see?”

“Probably, with this,” said the little man, stooping to pick up a large stone; but, as he bent, a well-filled though light bag, which he appeared to carry under his blouse, fell to the ground.

“Look, you are losing both bag and baggage,” said the other; “it does not seem very heavy.”

“They are samples of wool,” answered the man with the ferret’s face, as he hastily picked up the bag, and replaced it under his blouse; then he added:  “Attention! the big blaster is going to speak.”

And, in fact, he who exercised the most complete ascendency over this irritated crowd was the terrible quarryman.  His gigantic form towered so much above the multitude, that his great head, bound in its ragged handkerchief, and his Herculean shoulders, covered with a fallow goat skin, were always visible above the level of that dark and swarming crowd, only relieved here and there by a few women’s caps, like so many white points.  Seeing to what a degree of exasperation the minds of the crowd had reached, the small number