Beatrice went to the door beside Hester and, for what seemed a very long time, stood waiting without a word spoken by any one of them, so intently were they all listening. Much as Beatrice desired that John Herrick should explain the presence of that money upon the table, she dreaded his speaking, for she wished to lose no sound of the tumult that was coming ever nearer up the hill.
The crowd of men was in sight now, climbing the last rise of the trail. They were singing some wild foreign song: it might have been Russian, Polish, Hungarian; she knew not which. The words conveyed no meaning to her, but the loud harsh cadences seemed to cry out a message of their own: a song of blind tyrannies and passionate rebellion, of cracking whips and pistol-shots, of villages burning amid curses and weeping and the cries of children. She shivered with terror as the shouting voices came close.
“If only they were Americans,” she whispered to Hester. How could any one control such a mob which scarcely understood a common tongue?
“There is no knowing what they may do,” Hester whispered in answer, “but if any one is able to quiet them, Roddy can.”
The men came tramping up to the foot of the veranda steps and stopped—a dense, huddled throng with a tossing lantern carried here and there that showed the dark faces and the shining, excited eyes. A few figures stood out against the foreign backgrounds: a handful of American and Irish laborers, Dan O’Leary, head and shoulders taller than the others, Dabney Mills hovering on the outskirts of the group, talking incessantly and entirely unheeded.
Thorvik stood on the lowest step, his back to them, bareheaded and pouring out a stream of eloquence. Two or three men stepped up to him and began an earnest discussion, which waxed hotter and hotter as the minutes passed, as the crowd quieted, and as all stood waiting. Dabney Mills joined them, shaking his head and protesting vehemently. Beatrice, leaning forward, caught enough of the broken English to understand the meaning of their hesitation. They were arguing as to which should go in first. Inside a great sum of money was spread out upon the table, with no one to guard it but an injured man and two girls, yet these disturbers of the night’s peace were quarreling as to who should enter first.