He walked up between the rows of chairs, moving from side to side as he went. His knees were strangely weak. His face was pale and drawn, and his eyes seemed to be looking into some far distance. He took the oath and dropped into the witness-chair by the table, and waited for the torture that he knew would be his, and for the tragedy that was bound to swallow up his beloved lieutenant. CHAPTER XV The buzz of excitement due to Chick’s appearance on the witness stand had scarcely subsided, and the first question had not yet been asked him, when a man, breathless and perturbed, entered the court-room, pushed his way up to the table where the Barriscales were sitting, and announced, in a loud whisper, that a riot was at that moment in progress at the Barriscale mills. Immediately all was confusion. People began hastily to leave the room, and the president of the court martial, after consulting with his associates, and with counsel on both sides, announced an adjournment until the following Tuesday. There had, indeed, been a serious disturbance on the plaza in front of the mills, but by the time the Barriscales reached there the trouble was practically over. Two men, returning from their dinners to their work in the shops, had been set upon by pickets of the Industrialists and badly beaten. Supporters of both sides had hurried to the scene, and the fracas had promised to be a bloody one when the police, heavily reinforced by Barriscale guards, descended upon the combatants, rescued the union workers, and clubbed their adversaries from the plaza. But when the mob, frenzied and cursing, had been driven back, the rioters left one of their number prone and bleeding on the pavement, and that one was a woman, Marie Brussiloff, the boldest and most bigoted leader of the local Industrialist army. She was lifted up by the police, thrust into an ambulance, rattled away to the City Hospital, and for many a day her comrades saw her no more. But her fate aroused such a spirit of resentment and revenge as boded ill for the forces of law and order, for the safety of capitalist property, and for the lives of union workmen. That evening as Donatello sat at his table in the office and press-room of _The Disinherited_, he heard footsteps on the stairs and recognized them. It was General Chick who was coming. No one else had quite the same method of climbing the stairs. When the boy came stumbling in, and the editor caught a glimpse of his face in the lamplight, he was startled at its appearance. He had not seen him before for two days. With the court-martial impending it had been impossible for Chick to follow the routine of his regular tasks. Now he stood there, his cap in his hand, white faced, trembling with the excitement that was still on him, the pain of his unfortunate position still mirrored in his eyes.