It happened on this day that Nan Keith had refused an invitation to ride with Ben Sansome, but had agreed as a compromise to give him a cup of tea late in the afternoon. Nan's mood was latterly becoming more and more restless. It was an unconscious reflection of the times, unconscious because she had no real conception of what was going on. In obedience to Keith's positively expressed request she had kept away from the downtown districts, leaving the necessary marketing to Wing Sam. For the moment, as has been explained, her points of touch with society were limited. It happened that before the trouble began the Keiths had been subscribers to the Bulletin and the Herald, and these two journals continued to be delivered. Neither of them gave her much idea of what was really going on. For a moment her imagination was touched by the blank space of white paper the Bulletin left where King's editorials had usually been printed, but Thomas King's subsequent violence had repelled her. The Herald, after rashly treating the "affray" as a street brawl, lost hundreds of subscribers and most of its advertising. It shrunk to a sheet a quarter of its usual size. Naturally, its editor, John Nugent, was the more solidly and bitterly aligned with the Law and Order party. The true importance of the revolt, either as an ethical movement or merely as regards its physical size, did not get to Nan at all. She knew the time was one of turmoils and excitements. She believed the city in danger of mobs. Her attitude might be described as a mixture of fastidious disapproval and a sympathetic restlessness.
About the middle of the afternoon Mrs. Sherwood came up the front walk and rang the bell. Nan, sitting behind lace curtains, was impressed by her air of controlled excitement. Mrs. Sherwood hurried. She hurried gracefully, to be sure, and with a reminiscence of her usual feline indolence; but she hurried, nevertheless. Therefore, Nan herself answered the bell, instead of awaiting the deliberate Wing Sam.
"My dear," cried Mrs. Sherwood, "get your mantle, and come with me. There's something going to happen-something big!"
She refused to answer Nan's questions.
"You'll see," was all the reply she vouchsafed. "Hurry!"
They crossed by the new graded streets where the sand hills had been, and soon found themselves on the low elevations above the county jail. Mrs. Sherwood led the way to the porch of a onestory wooden house that appeared to be unoccupied.
"This is fine!" she said with satisfaction.
The jail was just below them, and they looked directly across the open square in front of it and the convergence of two streets. The jail was buzzing like a hive: men were coming and going busily, running away as though on errands, or darting in through the open door. Armed men were taking their places on the flat roof.
In contrast to this one little spot of excited activity, the rest of the scene was almost superlatively peaceful. People were drifting in from all the side streets, but they were sauntering slowly, as though without particular interest; they might have been going to or coming from church. A warm, basking, Sunday feel was in the sunshine. There was not the faintest breeze. Distant sounds carried clearly, as the barking of a dog-- it might have been Gringo shut up at home--or the crowing of a distant cock. From the square below arose the murmur of a multitude talking. The groups of people increased in frequency, in numbers. Black forms began to appear on roof tops all about; white faces at windows. It would have been impossible to say when the scattered groups became a crowd; when the side of the square filled; when the converging streets became black with closely packed people; when the windows and doors and balconies, the copings and railings, the slopes of the hills were all occupied, but so it was. Before she fairly realized that many were gathering, Nan looked down on twenty thousand people. They took their positions quietly, and waited. There was no shouting, no demonstration, so little talking that the low murmur never rendered inaudible the barking of the dog or the crowing of the distant cock. The doors of the jail had closed. Men ceased going in and out. The armed forces on the roof were increased.
Nan had left off asking questions of Mrs. Sherwood, who answered none. The feeling of tense expectation filled her also. What was forward? Was this a mob? Why were these people gathered? Somehow they gave her the impression that they, too, like Mrs. Sherwood and herself, were waiting to see.
After a long time she saw the closely packed crowd down the vista of one of the converging streets move in the agitation of some disturbance. A moment later the sun caught files of bayonets. At the same instant the same thing happened at the end of the other converging street. The armed columns came steadily forward, the people giving way. Their men were dressed in sober citizens' clothes. The shining steel of the bayonets furnished the only touch of uniform. Quietly and steadily they came forward, the snake of steel undulating and twisting like a living thing. The two columns reached the............