“Who are they?”
“I don’t know, Miss Lily. Hennery thinks mebbe they’re strikers. He’s put out the light at the back, so he can watch ’em without bein’ seen.”
For a moment Lily remained silent and thoughtful. Presently she said, “Put out the lights in here, Sarah. I’ll go and look myself.”
And she went out, leaving the frightened servant to extinguish the lamps.
A moment later, groping her way through the dark hallway to the servants’ quarters, she stumbled suddenly upon the terrified figure of Hennery kneeling down by a window, keeping watch.
“It’s Miss Lily, Hennery,” she said. “Don’t be frightened.”
The window was a blue rectangle against the wall of the hallway. It was a clear night but moonless, although the bright, cold sky was all powdered with glistening stars. Outside in the park, among the dead trunks of the trees, moved scores of figures black against the blue gray snow. Some of them carried lanterns of one sort or another. There were even women among them, women with shawls over their heads, wearing short heavy skirts which cleared the top of the deep snow. Behind them, the searchlights from the mill yard fingered the blue dome of the sky nervously, sweeping now up and down, now across striking the black chimneys and furnace towers, cutting them cleanly in two as if the cold rays of light were knives.
In the hallway the nervous breathing of Hennery became noisy. It was clear that something about the scene ... something which had to do with the silent, cold furnaces, the dead trees and the blackness of the moving figures aroused all the superstitious terror of the negro.
Outside the number of men increased. They appeared to be congregating now, in a spot near the deserted kennels. The lanterns moved among the trees like dancing lights above a swamp.
“It’s all right, Hennery,” said Lily presently. “It’s all right The police would only make matters worse. I suppose Miss Irene told them to meet here in the park. The police won’t let them meet anywhere else. It’s the last place they have.”