The glare--the noise of the square, as she dashes down into it
seems for the moment unendurable. The pushing, panting mass of men
and women of which she has now become a part, closes about her,
and for the moment she can see nothing but faces,--faces with
working mouths and blazing eyes,--a medley of antagonistic
expression, all directed against herself;--or so she felt in the
heat of her self-consciousness. But after the first recoil she
knew that no such universal recognition could be hers; that she
was merely a new and inconsiderable atom caught in a wave of
feeling which engulfed all it met; that this mob was not raised
from the stones to overwhelm her but HIM, and that if she flew, it
should be to his aid, and not to save herself. But how was she to
reach him? He would not come out by the main entrance; that she
knew. Where look for him, then? Suddenly she remembered; and using
some of her strength of which she had good measure, and more of
that address to which I have already alluded, she began to worm
herself along through this astounding collection of people much
too large already for the ordinary force of police to handle, to
that corner of the building where a small door opened upon a rear
street. She remembered it from those old days when she had once
entered this courthouse as a witness.
But alas, others knew it also, and thick as the crowd was in
front, it was even thicker here, and far more tumultuous. Word had
gone about that the father of Oliver Ostrander had been given his
lesson at last, and the curiosity of the populace had risen to
fever-heat in their anxiety to see how the proud Ostrander would
bear himself in his precipitate downfall.
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