little. His case was desperate. Desperation, however, inspires some
people with an almost superhuman energy. Life was sweet, and that day he
fought for his life. The very shouting and hooting of the mob, the roar
of the angry multitude, which might well have filled even a brave man
with panic, stimulated him, strengthened him to resist to the uttermost.

He fought like a lion, forcing his way through the furious crowd,
attacked in the most brutal way on every side, yet ever struggling on
if only by inches. Never once did his steadfastness waver, never for
a single instant did his spirit sink. His unfailing presence of mind
enabled him to get through what would have been impossible to most
men, his great height and strength stood him in good stead, while the
meanness and the injustice of the attack, the immense odds against which
he was fighting nerved him for the struggle.

It was more like a hideous nightmare than a piece of actual life, those
fierce tiger faces swarming around, that roar of vindictive anger, that
frightful crushing, that hail storm of savage blows! But, whether life
or nightmare, it must be gone through with. In the thick of the fight a
line of Goethe came to his mind, one of his favorite mottoes; "Make good
thy standing place and move the world."

And even then he half smiled to himself at the forlornness of the hope
that he should ever need a standing place again.

With renewed vigor he fought his way on, and with a sort of glow
of triumph and new-born hope had almost seen his way to a place of
comparative safety, when a fearful blow hopelessly maimed him. With a
vain struggle to save himself he fell to the earth a vision of fierce
faces, green leaves, and blue sky flashed before his eyes, an inward
vision of Erica, a moment's agony, and then the surging crowd closed
over him, and he knew no more.

CHAPTER XVII. At Death's Door

Sorrow and wrong are pangs of a new birth;
All we who suffer bleed for one another;
No life may live alone, but all in all;
We lie within the tomb of our dead selves,
Waiting till One command us to arise. Hon. Boden Noel.

Knowing that Erica would have a very anxious afternoon, Charles Osmond
gave up his brief midday rest, snatched a hasty lunch at a third-rate
restaurant, finished his parish visits sooner than usual, and reached
the little house in Guilford Terrace in time to share the worst part of
her waiting. He found her hard at wo