The outskirts of the town of Ashwater showed that it had been shaken from centre to circumference. Women were running bareheaded across the streets. Men were hastening here and there, and it could be seen that their hands were shaking, that their faces were set, that the expressions upon them more clearly resembled ravenous animals than men. They were calling out to each other, they were breathing threats, they were uttering awful curses. Man was telling man what the hands of the Morelands had done to him. Here was a man whose land had gone delinquent, and before he was able to redeem it, Martin Moreland had taken it from him for a third of its value. Here was a seamstress who had not been able to pay the street taxes in front of her little home, and because she had borrowed from Martin Moreland she had lost her shelter. Even from the country there were beginning to come teams driven by men whose faces were pictures of outrage. Conspicuous on the village streets was the form of Jimmy Price. He was rushing around with a sickle in one hand, telling every one who would listen what every one else had said. For once in his life he had forgotten to try to make himself ridiculous. In his excitement he became a pathetic thing. He who never had anything to lose was blustering, threatening, and wildly gesticulating over the wrongs of others. Men who had lost heavily, many of them the savings of a lifetime, were in a different mood. They were gathered in grim consultation. They were passing from house to house, in harsh tones they were making sure of their grievances: “Just what was the sum he skinned you out of, Robert?” “Did you say, John, your wife needn’t have died if you hadn’t been forced to move her in mid winter when she’d just had the baby?” They were remembering, they were recalling, they were computing, they were sowing the germs of a mob spirit right and left, but their work was certain and methodical. Unmolested, the boys of Ashwater had been busy. As the carriage came down the street, Mahala could see great streaks of yellow paint smeared across the front of the bank. The bronze dogs, so proudly referred to by Martin Moreland as the “watch dogs of the Treasury,” had been crudely muzzled with heavy wire, the yellow paint had been liberally used on them. Some one had broken off their tails and stuck them between their legs; the rough stumps were festooned with tin tomato and peach cans. When the carriage stopped in front of the bank, the party could only force their way a step at a time to the door. At sight of Mahala pandemonium broke loose. Here was the most tangible thing upon which they could lay their hands. On her they might give their imaginations free rein, with justice. Nothing could be done that could ever, in any degree, atone for the misery through which she had passed.