“Do you see them?” shouted Anne and, looking at the leader she felt as if in his face she saw all the faces that followed him in the shade—the faces of the whole victorious army.
Ulwing the builder gently opened the front gate.
When Christopher heard that Uncle Sebastian was dead he began to weep. His sobbing was audible in the corridor. Anne gazed rigidly, tearlessly, in front of her.
“Shall I then see him never more?”
“Never.”
Her little face was convulsed. She shut her eyes for a moment. She would have liked to be alone.
In the corridor, the Fügers were waiting with a miserable expression on their faces. The builder nodded silently to them. He went down the stairs. He wanted to be alone.
He stopped in the hall. A curious murmur was audible outside; it spread through the air with a penetrating force as if it had risen from the very foundation of things and beings, from between the roots of the town. He recognised it. It was the outcry of joy and sorrow; the breath of the town, and as Christopher Ulwing listened to it he felt keenly that the breath of the town and his own were but one. He rejoiced with the town. He wept with the town.... The hatred for those who had hurt what was his own—his brother, his home, his bridge, so much of his work—took definite shape in his heart.
As if facing a foe, he raised his head aggressively. His eye struck a little tablet hanging on the opposite door, it bore the German inscription: