The crowd outside the building, led by a factory worker and reinforced by sailors, learned that Antonoff was in the building, and were mad to be at the throats of the men who were holding their leader. They had still another grievance against the cadets. Many of these same boys had been captured once in the Winter Palace, and allowed to go free. They had broken their parole, and the sailors especially were bitter to think they had to sacrifice more of their comrades to re-arrest them. In the middle of the afternoon the cadets suggested a peace parley, offering to surrender Antonoff if they were allowed to go free. “We’ll take Antonoff ourselves, and kill every last one of you,” came back the answer. The boys grew desperate. “Why doesn’t Kerensky come? Why doesn’t Kerensky come?” they asked again and again. There was no one to answer. The older officers, who had been directing them, completely disappeared. The stock of ammunition diminished. A Red Cross automobile dashed up to the building at half-past two, left a box of hand-grenades, and departed again. A machine-gun had been set up on a wooden box in the street, and in the courtyard a woman with a shawl over her head loaded and reloaded the tape. The attacking forces were pressing closer and closer upon the building. The street barricades were abandoned. A few of the cadets poured up the stairs and into the front rooms. At four o’clock I was moved from my place at the window. “We want to shoot from here,” one of the cadets explained. With that they smashed the glass with the butts of their rifles, and took their places behind the yellow silk curtains. I walked across to a window overlooking the court. Two cadets passed into the building bearing a wounded comrade, who lay limp in the arms of his bearers. “Come away from here. They’re down in the courtyard at the foot of the stairs!” somebody shouted. With that the hall was deserted. Men and girls fled to the back of the building. In a pantry I found a boy officer with a huge breadknife, trying to cut the buttons from his coat with hands that trembled so they made a long job of it. Still another was tearing frantically at his epaulets. In an ante-room behind the switchboard three more discovered the street clothes of some mechanics, and were quickly stripping themselves. Suddenly the thing for which these boys had striven--the coveted gold braid and brass buttons of an officer’s uniform, symbol of their superiority--had become their curse. Any one of them would have given the last thing he possessed on earth for the suit of a common working-man. Stripped bare of every scrap of the pride and tradition of their class, they were caught in the grip of a fear that drained every drop of blood from their faces and every bit of courage from their hearts.