“The Cossack, the politzman belong to the boss, the capitalist!” he cried.  “We ain’t got no right to live.  I say, kill the capitalist—­kill Ditmar!”

A man with a deputy’s shield ran toward them.

“Move on!” he said brutally.  “Move on, or I’ll roil you in.”  And Janet, once clear of the people, fled westward, the words the foreigner had spoken ringing in her ears.  She found herself repeating them aloud, “Kill Ditmar!” as she hurried through the gathering dusk past the power house with its bottle-shaped chimneys, and crossed the little bridge over the stream beside the chocolate factory.  She gained the avenue she had trod with Eda on that summer day of the circus.  Here was the ragpicker’s shop, the fence covered with bedraggled posters, the deserted grand-stand of the base-ball park spread with a milky-blue mantle of snow; and beyond, the monotonous frame cottages all built from one model.  Now she descried looming above her the outline of Torrey’s Hill blurred and melting into a darkening sky, and turned into the bleak lane where stood the Franco-Belgian Hall—­Hampton Headquarters of the Industrial Workers of the World.  She halted a moment at sight of the crowd of strikers loitering in front of it, then went on again, mingling with them excitedly beside the little building.  Its lines were simple and unpretentious, and yet it had an exotic character all its own, differing strongly from the surrounding houses:  it might have been transported from a foreign country and set down here.  As the home of that odd, cooperative society of thrifty and gregarious Belgians it had stimulated her imagination, and once before she had gazed, as now, through the yellowed, lantern-like windows of the little store at the women and children waiting to fill their baskets with the day’s provisions.  In the middle of the building was an entrance leading up to the second floor.  Presently she gathered the courage to enter.  Her heart was pounding as she climbed the dark stairs and thrust open the door, and she stood a moment on the threshold almost choked by the fumes of tobacco, bewildered by the scene within, confused by the noise.  Through a haze of smoke she beheld groups of swarthy foreigners fiercely disputing among themselves—­apparently on the verge of actual combat, while a sprinkling of silent spectators of both sexes stood at the back of the hall.  At the far end was a stage, still set with painted, sylvan scenery, and seated there, alone, above the confusion and the strife, with a calmness, a detachment almost disconcerting, was a stout man with long hair and a loose black tie.  He was smoking a cigar and reading a newspaper which he presently flung down, taking up another from a pile on the table beside him.  Suddenly one of the groups, shouting and gesticulating, surged toward him and made an appeal through their interpreter.  He did not appear to be listening; without so much as lowering his newspaper he spoke a few words in reply, and the group retired, satisfied.