Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/339

 the town of Edgewater to ashes as the people of Edgewater had doomed the works of John Boland to the same.

A new kind of panic seized upon the people, a panic in their souls. They stared inert, helpless. First the ground taken out from under them and now the roof burned down over their heads; it was as if God had struck them. Why lift a hand to avert this final blow, why stir a step to fly from that punishment which seemed prepared for them? "Vengeance is Mine." They had taken their own vengeance on Boland and the fires they kindled had flared back to take a fateful vengeance on the little all that was left them.

But this attitude passed. Everybody ran to save what he might—and then to escape. The doors of stores were flung open. Stocks, furniture, fittings were hurried into the streets, to be, within a few minutes, abandoned. The flames raced too rapidly.

In the residence district there was more time—there were more open spaces; for every home in Edgewater had its lawn in front, its garden in the rear. Householders began frantically carrying out their possessions into the streets. Automobiles were being employed; trucks, touring-cars with tops thrown off, and sedans and limousines with windows lowered and household furnishings thrust frantically through the frames, were all piled high or stuffed full and making trips into the park around the courthouse or to the vacant ground at the edges of the town.

Great prices were offered for means of transportatation; great prices demanded by shameless profiteers. Horses were hurriedly hitched to wagons; wheelbarrows were trundled out of gardeners' houses and from