A motley throng of people were crowding in through the double
gateway. Some one was in their grasp. Was it the woman? No; it was
Bela! Bela, the giant! Bela, the terror of the town, but no longer
a terror now but a struggling, half-fainting figure, fighting to
free itself and get in advance, despite some awful hurt which
blanched his coal-black features into an indescribable hue and
made his great limbs falter and his gasping mouth writhe in
anguish while still keeping his own and making his way, by sheer
force of will, up the path and the two steps of entrance--his body
alternately sinking back or plunging forward as those in the rear
or those in front got the upper hand.
It was an awful and a terrifying sight to little Miss Weeks and,
screaming loudly, she left her window and ran, scattering her
small party before her like sheep, not into the near refuge of the
front hall and its quiet parlours, but into the very spot towards
which this mob seemed headed--the great library pulsing with its
own terror, in the shape of the yet speechless and unconscious man
to whom the loudest noise and the most utter silence were yet as
one, and the worst struggle of human passion a blank lost in
unmeaning chaos.
Why this instinctive move? She could not tell. Impulse prevailed,
and without a thought she flew into Judge Ostrander's presence,
and, gazing wildly about, wormed her way towards a heavily carved
screen guarding a distant corner, and cowered down behind it.
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