her
room.

He strode to the staircase door, opened it softly and listened. No, all
was silent above; and then a new notion struck him, and he glanced
round. Her hood was gone. It was not on the table on which he had seen
it last night.

It was so unlikely, however, that she had gone out without telling him,
that he dismissed the notion; and, something recovered from the strange
agitation into which the cry had cast him, he yawned. He returned to the
hearth and knelt and re-arranged the sticks so that the air might have
freer access to the fire. Presently he would draw the water for her, and
fill the great kettle, and sweep the floor. The future might be gloomy,
the prospect might lower, but the present was not without its pleasures.

All his life his slowness to guess the truth on this occasion was a
puzzle to him. For the materials were his. Slowly, gradually, as he
crouched sleepily before the fire, it grew upon him that there was a
noise in the air; a confused sound, not of one cry, but of many, that
came from the street, from the rampart. A noise, now swelling a little,
now sinking a little, that seemed as he listened not so distant as it
had sounded a while ago. Not distant at all, indeed; quite close--now! A
sound of rushing water, rather soothing; or, as it swelled, a sound of a
crowd, a gibing, mocking crowd. Yes, a crowd. And then in one instant
the change was wrought.

He was on his feet; he was at the door. He, who a moment before had
nodded over the fire, watching the flames grow, was transformed in five
seconds into a furious man, tugging at the door, wrestling madly with
the unyielding oak. Wrestling, and still the noise rose! And still he
strained in vain, back and sinew, strained until with a cry of despair
he found that he could not win. The door was locked, the key was gone!
He was a prisoner!

And still the noise that maddened him, rose. He sprang to the right-hand
window, the window nearest the commotion. He tore open a panel of the
small leaded panes, and thrust his head between the bars. He saw a
crowd; for an instant, in the heart of the crowd and raised above it,
he saw an uplifted arm and a white woman's face from which blood was
flowing. He drew in his head, and laid his hands to one of the bars and
flung his weight this way and that, flung it desperately, heedless of
injury. But in vain. The lead that soldered the bar into the strong
stone mullion held, and would have held against the s