“They've lighted a fire they can't put out,” was Howard's comment. His mouth was very dry and his face twitching, for he saw, behind the frail barrier of the Chester Street bridge, the quiet houses of the city, the sleeping children. He saw Grace and Lily, and Elinor. He was among the first to reach the river front. All through the dawn volunteers labored at the bridge head. Members of the Vigilance Committee, policemen and firemen, doctors, lawyers, clerks, shop-keepers, they looted the river wharves with willing, unskillful hands. They turned coal wagons on their sides, carried packing cases and boxes, and, under the direction of men who wore the Legion button, built skillfully and well. Willy Cameron toiled with the others. He lifted and pulled and struggled, and in the midst of his labor he had again that old dream of the city. The city was a vast number of units, and those units were homes. Behind each of those men there was, somewhere, in some quiet neighborhood, a home. It was for their homes they were fighting, for the right of children to play in peaceful streets, for the right to go back at night to the rest they had earned by honest labor, for the right of the hearth, of lamp-light and sunlight, of love, of happiness. Then, in the flare of a gasoline torch, he came face to face with Louis Akers. The two men confronted each other, silently, with hostility. Neither moved aside, but it was Akers who spoke first. “Always busy, Cameron,” he said. “What'd the world do without you, anyhow?” “Aren't you on the wrong side of this barricade?” “Smart as ever,” Akers observed, watching him intently. “As it happens, I'm here because I want to be, and because I can't get where I ought to be.” For a furious moment Willy Cameron thought he was referring to his wife, but there was something strange in Akers' tone. “I could be useful to you fellows,” he was saying, “but it seems you don't want help. I've been trying to see the Mayor all night.” “What do you want to see him about?” “I'll tell him that.” Willy Cameron hesitated. “I think it's a trick, Akers.” “All right. Then go to the devil!” He turned away sullenly, leaving Willy Cameron still undecided. It would be like the man as he knew him, this turning informer when he saw the strength of the defense, and Cameron had a flash of intuition, too, that Akers might see, in this new role, some possible chance to win back with Lily Cardew. He saw how the man's cheap soul might dramatize itself. “Akers!” he called. Akers stopped, but he did not turn. “I've got a car here. If you mean what you say, and it's straight, I'll take you.” “Where's the car?”