noise and confusion. A desperate fight was in progress, surging round
something, some one.

"It is Anna Petrovna!" a woman screamed above the din. "They tore her
clothes from her; they are beating her to death with their _nagaikas_!
Mother of Mercy! That such things should be!"

"'_A la vie et a la mort._' Save her; avenge her," some one shouted, I
myself I think, and the cry was taken up and echoed hoarsely on all
sides. So, there must be many of the League in the turmoil.

Now I was in the thick of it, a swaying, struggling mass of men and
horses; many of the horses plunging riderless as the wild horsemen were
dragged from their saddles, and disappeared in that stormy sea of
outraged humanity. The Cossacks were getting the worst of it, for once,
not a doubt of that.

"Back," roared a mighty voice. "We have her; back I say; make way
there,--let us pass!"

Mishka's voice, and Mishka's burly figure, mounted on a horse, pressed
forward slowly, forcing a way through for another horseman who followed
close in his wake.

"Make way, comrades," shouted Mishka again, and at the cry, at the sight
of the grim silent horseman in the rear, a curious lull fell on all
within sight and hearing; though elsewhere the strife raged furiously as
ever.

Loris sat erect in his saddle, as if on parade; bareheaded, his face set
like a white mask, his brilliant blue eyes fixed, expressionless, no,
that's not the right word, but I can't say what the expression was;
neither horror nor anguish, nor despair, just a quiet steady gaze,
without a trace of human emotion in it. Save that he was breathing
heavily and slowly, he might have been a statue,--or a corpse. I am sure
he was quite unconscious of his surroundings. The reins lay loose on his
horse's neck, and, though its sides heaved, and its coat was a plaster
of sweat and foam and blood, the good beast took its own way quietly
through that densely packed, suddenly silent mob, as if it, like its
master, was oblivious of the mad world around them.

But it was on the burden borne by the silent horseman that every eye was
fixed; a burden partly hidden by a soldier's great coat. I knew she was
dead,--we all knew it,--though the head with its bright dishevelled
hair, as it lay heavily on her lover's shoulder, seemed to have a
semblance of life, as it moved slightly with the rise and fall of his
breast. Her face was hidden, but from under the coat one long arm swayed
limp, its whiteness hide