the fighting, plunging prisoner; between their bodies,
and past those of the men and women who had run out with them, his
young, black-avised face surged and raged in an agony of resistance,
lifting itself in a maniac effort to be free, then dragged and beaten
down. An old woman tottered on the fringes of the struggle, crying
feebly; others, young and old, wept or screamed; a soldier, bitten in
the hand, cried an oath and gave way. The prisoner tore himself all
but loose.

"Verfluchter Schweinhund!" roared Captain Halm suddenly. He had stood
till then intent, steeped in the interest of the thing, but aloof as
an engineer might watch the action of his machine till the moment at
which it fails. Suddenly, a dangerous compact figure of energy, he
dashed across the road, shouting. "You'd resist arrest, would you?"
he was vociferating. His bamboo cane, thick as a stout thumb, rose
and fell twice smashingly; Jovannic saw the second blow go home upon
the hair above the prisoner's forehead. The man was down in an
instant, and the soldiers were over him and upon him. Captain Hahn,
cane in hand, stood like a victorious duelist.

The old woman the prisoner's mother, possibly, had staggered back at
the thrash of the stick, and now, one hand against the wall of the
house and one to her bosom, she uttered a thin, moaning wail. At that
voice of pain Jovannic started; it was then that he realized that the
other voices, those that had screamed and those that had cursed, had
ceased; even the prisoner, dragged to his feet and held, made no
sound. For an instant the disorder of his mind made it appear that
the sun-drowned silence had never really been broken, that all that
had happened had been no more than a flash of nightmare. Then he
perceived.

Captain Hahn, legs astraddle, a-bulge with the sense of achievement,
was giving orders.

"Tie the dog's hands," he commanded. "Tie them behind his back! Cord?
Get a cord somewhere, you fool! Teach the hound to resist, I will!
Hurry now!"

The prisoner's face was clear to see, no longer writhen and crazy.
For all the great bruise that darkened his brow, it was composed to a
calm as strange as the calm of death. He looked directly at Captain
Hahn, seeming to listen and understand; and when that man of wrath
ceased to speak, his rather sullen young face, heavy-browed,
thick-mouthed, relaxed from its quiet. He smiled!

Beyond him, against the yellow front of the cottage, an old man,
barehead