"What!" cried Philip, turning pale, not from fear, but from self-reproach to think he might have made a mistake. "Who is trying to kill him—the mill-men?"
"Yes! No! I do not, cannot tell. But he is in great danger, and you are the only man in this town who can help to save him. Come!"
Philip turned to his wife. "Sarah, it is my duty. If anything should happen to me you know my soul will meet yours at the gates of Paradise."
He kissed her, and rushed out into the night.
CHAPTER IX.
When Philip reached the residence of Mr. Winter, he found himself at once in the midst of a mob of howling, angry men, who surged over the lawn and tramped the light snow that was falling into a muddy mass over the walks and up the veranda steps. A large electric lamp out in the street in front of the house threw a light over the strange scene.
Philip wedged his way in among the men, crying out his name, and asking for room to be made so that he could see Mr. Winter. The crowd, under the impulse which sometimes moves excited bodies of men, yielded to his request. There were cries of, "Let him have a minister if he wants one!" "Room here for the priest!" "Give the preacher a chance to do some praying where it's needed mighty bad!" and so on. Philip found a way opened for him as he struggled toward the house, and he hurried forward fearing some great trouble, but hardly prepared for what he saw when he finally reached the steps of the veranda.
Half a dozen men had the mill-owner in their grasp, having evidently dragged him out of his dining-room. His coat was half torn off, as if there had been a struggle. Marks of bloody fingers stained his collar. His face was white, and his eyes filled with the fear of death. Within, upon the floor, lay his wife, who had fainted. A son and a daughter, his two grown-up children, clung terrified to one of the servants, who kneeled half fainting herself by the side of the mill-owner's wife. A table overturned and fragments of a late dinner scattered over the sideboard and on the floor, a broken plate, the print of a muddy foot on the white tiling before the open fire,—the whole picture flashed upon Philip like a scene out of the French Revolution, and he almost rubbed his eyes to know if he was awake and in America in the nineteenth century. He was intensely practical, however, and the nature of his duty never for a moment escaped him. He at once advanced and said calmly:—
"What does all this mean? Why this attack on Mr. Winter?"
The moment Mr. Winter saw Philip and heard his voice he cried out, trembling: "Is that you, Mr. Strong? Thank God! Save me! They are going to kill me!"