It was about ten o'clock in the morning and the streets were full of shoppers, many of them ladies who had been afraid to venture out during the past week.
As if they had risen out of the ground, scores of rough-looking men and street boys began to push and jostle the shoppers on the narrow sidewalks until many of the frightened women took refuge in the stores, and the shopkeepers, fearful of what might follow, began hastily putting up their shutters and making ready to close their stores, if necessary. These signs of apprehension gave great delight to the rougher element in the streets, and they yelled and hooted uproariously at the cautious shopkeepers, but they did not stop. Steadily, swiftly they followed that body of men marching with dark, determined faces to the sound of the fife and the drum.
"Where are they going?" Theo asked of a man at his side and the reply was,
"To the car-house, I reckon. They're ripe for mischief now."
"What's stirred 'em up again--anything new?" the boy questioned.
"Many of the strikers have been discharged and new men brought on--five hundred of them--from New York and Chicago. I'm afraid we haven't seen the worst of the troubles yet."
"Look! Look!" cried a boy, close beside Theodore, and the latter looking ahead, saw a squad of mounted officers coming through a cross street. Without stopping to parley they charged into the marching strikers and dispersed them, silencing the fife and drum, and when the furious mob of followers and sympathisers yelled threats and defiance at the officers, the latter charged into the mob riding up to the pavement and forcing the people back into the stores and dwellings behind them.
This was as fuel to the fire of anger and insurrection. Deep and dire threats passed from lip to lip, and evil purpose hardened into grim determination as the mob slowly surged in the direction of the car-house, after the officers had passed on. The throng was far more quiet now, and far more dangerous. Again and again, Theodore caught glimpses of Tom Steel's insignificant face, and like a long, dark shadow, Carrots followed ever at his heels.
No cars were running now, but the boy heard low-spoken references to new men and "scabs," and "the will of the people," as, almost without effort of his own, he was borne onward with the throng.
At a little distance from the car-house the strikers again drew together and stood mostly in gloomy silence, their eyes ever turning toward the closed doors of the great building before them. The vast crowd waited, too, in a silence that seemed to throb and pulse with intense and bitter feeling. The strikers had stopped in the middle of the street, and around them on every side, except toward the car-house, the crowd pressed and surged like a vast human sea. There were not many women in the number gathered there, and the few who were there were of the lowest sort, but men and boys--largely tramps, roughs and street boys--were there in countless numbers, mingled with not a few of the better class.