For a week or more they lived under the beginnings of a social system which was rendered possible by their certainty of a daily mess; and then came what, perhaps, was inevitable—discovery of pilfering from the store that gave life to them all. The pilferers, detected by the night guard, fled on the instant, well knowing that their sin against the very existence of the little community was a sin beyond hope of forgiveness; they eluded pursuit in the darkness and by morning had vanished from the neighbourhood. For the time only; since they took with them the knowledge of the hoarded grain they had forfeited—a knowledge which was power and a weapon to themselves, a danger to those they had fled from. Two days later, after nightfall, a skeleton rabble, armed with knives, clubs and stones, was led into the town by the renegades; and there was fought out a fierce, elementary battle, a struggle of starved men for the prize of life itself.... From the first the case of the defenders was hopeless; outnumbered and taken by surprise, they were beaten in detail, overwhelmed—and in less than five minutes the survivors were flying for their lives, the darkness their only hope of safety. * * * * * Theodore Savage was of the remnant who owed their lives to darkness and the speed with which they fled. As he neared the outskirts of the town and slackened, exhausted, to draw breath, he heard the patter of running steps behind him and for a moment believed himself pursued—till a passing burst of moonlight showed the runner as a woman, like himself seeking safety in flight. A young woman, with a sobbing open mouth, who clutched at his arm and besought him not to leave her to be killed—to save her, to get her away!... He knew her by sight as he knew all the members of the destitute little community—a girl with a face once plump, now hollowed, whom he had seen daily when she came, in stupid wretchedness, to hold out her bowl for her share of the common ration; one of a squalid company of three or four women who herded together—and whose habit of instinctive fellowship was broken by the sudden onslaught which had driven them apart in flight. “I don’t know where they’ve all gone,” she wailed. “Don’t leave me—for Gawd’s saike don’t leave me.... Ow, whatever shall I do?... I dunno where to go—for Gawd’s sake....” He would gladly have been rid of her lamenting helplessness but she clung to him in a panic that would not be gainsaid, as fearful almost of the lonely dark ahead as of the bloody brawl she had fled from. “Hold your tongue,” he ordered as he pulled her along. “Don’t make that noise or they’ll hear us. And keep close to me—keep in the shadow.”