But most of their countrymen weren't, he realized sickly. Urban civilization had become too big, too specialized. There were people in the millions who had never pitched a tent, butchered a pig, fixed a machine. What was going to become of them? Toward evening, he was relieved and slogged home, too numb with cold and weariness to think much. He gulped down the dinner his wife had ready and tumbled into bed. It seemed as if he had not slept at all when the phone was ringing. He groped toward it, cursing as he tried to unglue his eyes. Culquhoun's voice rattled at him: "You and Betty come up to the college, Somerset Hall, right away. There's hell to pay." "How--?" "Our lookout on the water tower has seen fires starting to the south. Something's approaching, and it doesn't look friendly." Sleep drained from Arch and he stood in a grayness where Satan jeered at him: "_Si monumentum requiris, circumspice!_" Slowly, he nodded. "We'll be right along." The campus was jammed with townspeople. In the vague pre-dawn light, Arch saw them as a moving river of white, frightened faces. Farmer, merchant, laborer, student, teacher, housewife, they had all receded into a muttering anonymity through which he pushed toward the steps of the hall. The irregular militia was forming ranks there, with Culquhoun's shaggy form dominating the scene. "There you are," he snapped. "Betty, can you help take charge of the women and children and old people? Get them inside--this one building ought to hold them all, with some crowding. Kind of circulate around, keep them calm. We'll pass out coffee and doughnuts as soon as the Salvation Army bunch can set up a canteen." "What's the plan?" asked a guardsman. To Arch, his voice had a dim dreamlike quality, none of this was real, it couldn't be. "I don't know what those arsonists intend or where they're bound," said Culquhoun, "but we'd better be ready to meet them. The traffic through town stopped completely a few hours ago--I think there's a gang of highwaymen operating." "Colin, it can't be! Plain people like us--" "Hungry, frightened, angry, desperate, confused people. A mob has nothing to do with the individuals in it, my friend. And one small push is enough to knock down a row of dominoes. Once lawlessness really gets started, a lot of others are driven into it in self-defense." They waited. The sun came up, throwing a pale bleak light over the late snow and the naked trees. The canteen handed out a sort of breakfast. Little was said. At nine-thirty, a boy on a clumsy plowhorse came galloping up toward them. "About a hundred, marching down the highway," he panted. "They threw a couple shots at me." "Stay here," said Culquhoun. "I'm going down to see if we can't parley. I'll want about ten men with me. Volunteers?"