Janet, in the main stream sweeping irresistibly down the middle of the street, was carried beyond the lumberyard into the narrow roadway beside the canal—­presently to find herself packed in the congested mass in front of the bridge that led to the gates of the Chippering Mill.  Across the water, above the angry hum of human voices could be heard the whirring of the looms, rousing the mob to a higher pitch of fury.  The halt was for a moment only.  The bridge rocked beneath the weight of their charge, they battered at the great gates, they ran along the snow-filled tracks by the wall of the mill.  Some, in a frenzy of passion, hurled their logs against the windows; others paused, seemingly to measure the distance and force of the stroke, thus lending to their act a more terrible and deliberate significance.  A shout of triumph announced that the gates, like a broken dam, had given way, and the torrent poured in between the posts, flooding the yard, pressing up the towered stairways and spreading through the compartments of the mill.  More ominous than the tumult seemed the comparative silence that followed this absorption of the angry spirits of the mob.  Little by little, as the power was shut off, the antiphonal throbbing of the looms was stilled.  Pinioned against the parapet above the canal—­almost on that very spot where, the first evening, she had met Ditmar—­Janet awaited her chance to cross.  Every crashing window, every resounding blow on the panels gave her a fierce throb of joy.  She had not expected the gates to yield—­her father must have insecurely fastened them.  Gaining the farther side of the canal, she perceived him flattened against the wall of the gatehouse shaking his fist in the faces of the intruders, who rushed past him unheeding.  His look arrested her.  His face was livid, his eyes were red with anger, he stood transformed by a passion she had not believed him to possess.  She had indeed heard him give vent to a mitigated indignation against foreigners in general, but now the old-school Americanism in which he had been bred, the Americanism of individual rights, of respect for the convention of property, had suddenly sprung into flame.  He was ready to fight for it, to die for it.  The curses he hurled at these people sounded blasphemous in Janet’s ears.

“Father!” she cried.  “Father!”

He looked at her uncomprehendingly, seemingly failing to recognize her.

“What are you doing here?” he demanded, seizing her and attempting to draw her to the wall beside him.  But she resisted.  There sprang from her lips an unpremeditated question:  “Where is Mr. Ditmar?” She was, indeed, amazed at having spoken it.

“I don’t know,” Edward replied distractedly.  “We’ve been looking for him everywhere.  My God, to think that this should happen with me at the gates!” he lamented.  “Go home, Janet.  You can’t tell what’ll happen, what these fiends will do, you may get hurt.  You’ve got no business here.”  Catching sight of a belated and breathless policeman, he turned from her in desperation.  “Get ’em out!  Far God’s sake, can’t you get ’em out before they ruin the machines?”