ce.

The street itself was quiet; the soldiers, the mob were gone; all the
houses were shut and silent, though scared faces were peeping from some
of the upper windows. Here and there a wounded man or woman was
staggering or crawling away; and close beside me a woman was sitting,
like a statue of despair, with her back against the wall, and something
lying prone across her knees--the little mangled body of the boy who had
been killed in the first scuffle, that Marie Levinska had provoked.

I remembered all then, and looked round wildly for Anne. There was no
sign either of her or of Natalya.

I scrambled up, impatiently binding my handkerchief tight round my
wounded head, which was bleeding profusely now, and stood over the
silent woman.

"Where are they? Where is the lady who was with you?" I demanded
hoarsely. "Answer me, for God's sake!"

"They took her away--those devils incarnate--and the other woman got up
and ran after," she answered dully. "There was an officer with them; he
cried out that they would teach her not to insult the army."

I felt my blood run cold. Since I returned to this accursed country I
had seen many--and heard of more--deeds of such fiendish cruelty
perpetrated on weak women, on innocent little children, that I knew what
the Cossacks were capable of when their blood was up. They were, as the
women said, devils incarnate at such times.

My strength came back to me, the strength of madness, and I rushed away,
down that stricken street, with but one clear idea in my mind,--to die
avenging Anne, for I knew no power on earth could save her.

As I ran the tumult waxed louder, coming, as I guessed, from the great
square to which the street led at this end.

Half-way along, a woman, huddled in the roadway, clutched at me, with a
moaning cry. I shook off her grasp, glanced at her, and saw she was
Natalya. The faithful soul had not been able to follow her mistress far.

"Where have they taken her?" I cried.

She could not speak, but she glared at me, a world of anguish and horror
in her dark eyes, and pointed in the direction I was going, and I
hurried on. I had a "killer" in my hand, the deadly little bludgeon of
lead, set on a spiral copper spring, that was the favorite weapon of the
mob, though I haven't the least notion as to when I picked it up.

Now I was on the fringe of the crowd that overflowed from the square,
and was pushing my way forward towards the centre, a furious vortex of