Women of the streets accosted him. He passed a house from a window on the ground-floor of which two girls with painted faces beckoned. He passed brightly lighted saloons that sent into the street inviting streams of light and the lure of clinking glasses and laughter. In a jostling thoroughfare he noticed that passersby were looking strangely at him and, recollecting what a queer picture his disordered clothes and bloody face must present, he blamed himself for not repairing the damages of the fight before setting out. He turned again into the less frequented quarters. Here he looked at his watch, but his watch had stopped at half-past seven, the moment, probably, of his charge to Betty’s rescue. Seeing the lighted window of a jeweler’s shop near by, he went to it and looked at the clock displayed there. It was nine o’clock. As he could not have been walking for more than an hour, and as the active rioting must have begun no later than seven-fifteen, all the events of the riot must have been massed within forty-five minutes. He turned back toward the factory. He hated these city thoroughfares. His boyish dreams of the open road and the tramping carpenter returned to him.... If he could only read his credentials.... §2. When Luke entered the office on the ground floor, the little militia captain was there. He had come for whiskey and finished the bottle. He was quite drunk, and evinced a thick but facile desire to describe the victory that his troops had won. "Oh, go away!" said Luke. He turned Facciolati out. Breil came next, and some of the policemen, the former anxious to report the present condition of the mill, the latter that of the streets; but to these men Luke was scarcely more civil than he had been to the Italian. Whether he liked it or not, he must think things out. "There’s no reason for you to stay any longer, if you don’t want to," said Breil. Luke looked at him vacantly. "I do want to," he said. One of the policemen glanced significantly at the empty whiskey-bottle and smiled. "I have some things to think about," said Luke. "I’ll go up to the office over this. Tell the fellows I don’t want anybody to butt in, Breil." He decided that it would be well for him to do his thinking in the room in which he had so nearly done Betty what she must consider the ultimate wrong. He went there. §3. He closed, but did not lock the door; he trusted to his orders against intrusion. The street-lamp furnished the room with sufficient illumination. Luke saw that one of the chairs had been overturned and lay close beside the table. He must have overturned it while struggling with Betty, but, so far as he could recollect—and his mind for some time employed itself with such trifles—he had not remarked the fall at the moment of its occurrence.