on the ground-floor were rolled, swift as one could follow another, into
the street, when they were at once seized by those waiting without, and
their heads knocked in, and their contents strewn over the pavement. On
the upper lofts, they were rolled to the broken windows, and lifted on to
the sill, and tumbled below. Warned by their descent, the crowd backed to
the farther side of the street. Part would be staved in by their fall;
those that were not, were seized as they rolled off the sidewalk, and the
heads knocked out. One fellow, as he stood by the window-sill and pitched
the barrels below, shouted as each one went with a crash to the flagging:
"_Here goes flour at eight dollars a barrel!_"

The scene which now presented itself was a most strange, extraordinary
one. The night was clear and cold, and the wintry moon was sailing
tranquilly through the blue and starlit heavens, flooding here and there
the sea of upturned faces with its mellow light, or casting the deep
shadow of intervening houses over the black mass, while the street looked
as if a sudden snow-storm had carpeted it with white. The men in the
windows and those below were white with flour that had sifted over their
garments; while, to give a still wilder aspect to the scene, women, some
bareheaded, some in rags, were roaming around like camp-followers after
plunder. Here a group had seized empty boxes; there others pressed forward
with baskets on their arms; and others still, empty-handed, pushed along,
with their aprons gathered up like a sack. These all knelt amid the flour,
and scooped it up with an eagerness that contrasted strangely with the
equal eagerness of those who were scattering it like sand over the street.
The heavy thud of the barrels as they struck almost momentarily on the
sidewalk, could be distinctly heard above the shouts of the men. Some of
the mob found their way into Mr. Hart's counting-room, and tore up his
papers and scattered them over the floor. It was evident they were bent on
utter destruction; but when about five hundred barrels of flour had been