Trevelle took up the paper and read the report to the last line. Yesterday at five o'clock, an enormous rabble had surrounded the factory by Leman Street, and there being no one in charge who could deal with them, the hooligans had set the place on fire and burned it to the ground. From that they had gone on to other pleasantries, chiefly connected with the philanthropic agencies in the East End. A mission had been burned at Stepney; a boys' institute at Bethnal Green. There was hardly a baker's shop in the locality which had not been looted, while some of the larger stores were but shattered ruins. The report added that a vast horde of ruffians, numbering at least two hundred thousand men, was then marching upon Pall Mall, and that troops were being hurried to London. It was altogether the most sensational affair since the beginning of the frost. "Poor little Gabrielle!" said Trevelle, thinking first of the woman. "I'm glad she wasn't there. This will be an awful blow to her!" "Not if she's got the common sense I credit her with. Women's ideals are not readily shaken, and Miss Silvester has some big ones, which are permanent. I'll see her to-day, and we'll know what's to be done. Tell her as much when we get to London." "If there is any London left to get to----" "Oh! there'll be a nook and corner somewhere. Your fellows have a genius for dealing with mobs. I would back the police in London against all the riff-raff east of St. Paul's. But they'll do some mischief, none the less--and even this may not help us for the moment. Do you guess what's in that cable, Mr. Trevelle--why, how should you? And yet it might mean more to your people to-day than ten million sovereigns, counted out on the floor of Westminster Hall!" He held up the familiar dirty paper upon which the Post Office writes the most momentous of messages, and then showed his companion that it had come from Queenstown. "The men on my side have given in," he said, adding nothing of his own act in that great matter, "the steamers will be sailing inside twenty-four hours. It's a race, sir, between me and the worst side of your nation. And I guess I'll win." "If you do," said Trevelle earnestly, "there is nothing our government can do to repay the debt." "Unless they teach the people the lesson of it; do you think it is nothing to an American to see this great country at the mercy of the first food panic which overtakes her? I tell you, it is as much to my countrymen as to yours. Teach them that they have a precious possession in this island kingdom, and you are doing a great work. I shall be a proud man to have a hand in it----" "You certainly will have that. It's a lesson we all need. I don't think I could have repeated it myself, but for these weeks. Now, I know--and the man who knows can never forget."