The limp arms were dragged out and as others came in the keeper bounded to the gate and catching up his missile beat madly upon flesh and bone until the besiegers abandoned their search for the bolts.
The thunder of assault began again, for the gate could not hold long. The trapped victims shrieked and out of the mass fingers pointed at Lydia.
Suddenly, she stood away from her father's arm. Walking to one of the keepers of the unassaulted gates, she said to him:
"I am she whom they want without! Let me forth!"
A tall spare old man, one of the strangers who had entered last, approached her. But the girl motioned him aside and he made the sign of the cross over her.
Her father, watching her, did not realize until the keeper undid the bolts which held the wicket, or subsidiary gate in the large one, that Lydia meant to pass out into the night.
With a cry, he sprang after her.
A hush fell in the Synagogue.