trength of four.
With heaving breast, and hands from which the blood was starting, he
stood back, glared round him, then with a cry flung himself upon the
other window, tore it open and seized a bar--the middle one of the
three. It was loose he remembered. God! why had he not thought of it
before? Why had he wasted time?

He wasted no more, with those shouts of cruel glee in his ears. The bar
came out in his hands. He thrust himself feet first through the
aperture. Slight as he was, it was small for him, and he stuck fast at
the hips, and had to turn on his side. The rough edges of the bars
scraped the skin, but he was through, and had dropped to his feet, the
bar which he had plucked out still in his hands. For a fraction of a
second, as he alighted, his eyes took in the crowd, and the girl at bay
against the wall. She was raised a little above her tormentors by the
steps on which she had taken refuge.

On one side her hair hung loose, and the cheek beneath it was cut and
bleeding, giving her a piteous and tragic aspect. Four out of five of
her assailants were women; one of these had torn her face with her
nails. Streaks of mud were mingled with the blood which ran down her
neck; and even as Claude recovered himself after the drop from the
window, a missile, eluding the bent arm with which she strove to shield
her face, struck and bespattered her throat where the collar of her
frock had been torn open--perhaps by the same rough clutch which had
dragged down her hair. The ring about her--like all crowds in the
beginning--were strangely silent; but a yell of derision greeted this
success, and a stone flew, narrowly missing her, and another, and
another. A woman, holding a heavy Bible after the fashion of a shield,
was stooping and striking at her knees with a stick, striving to bring
her to the ground; and with the cruel laughter that hailed the hag's
ungainly efforts were mingled other and more ugly sounds, low curses,
execrations, and always one fatal word, "Witch! Witch!"--fatal word spat
at her by writhing mouths, hissed at her by pale lips, tossed broadcast
on the cold morning wind, to breed wherever it flew fear and hate and
suspicion. For, even while they mocked her they feared her, and shielded
themselves against her power with signs and crossings and the Holy Book.

To all, curse and blow and threat, she had only one word. Striving
patiently to shield her face, "Let me go!" she wailed pitifully. "Let me
go! L