The line wavered and began to break in places. For one moment the churchyard gate lay clear before Boleslav's eyes, but the next, fresh figures had moved up from behind and filled the breach.
Again the clamour arose, and mingling with it a loud, gurgling laugh of derision. In another instant something round, black, and polished was levelled at Boleslav's head, and behind it sparkled a pair of malignant eyes. He had only a second in which to realise what was going to happen, before a figure, supple as a panther's, shot past him and plunged into the midst of the Schrandeners' troops, which again showed signs of giving way. In the hiatus thus made, Boleslav saw two forms wrestling on the ground, one that of a woman, the other a man's. The woman overpowered her antagonist, and wrested from his hand the gleaming bore of a gun.
It was the carpenter Hackelberg and his daughter. She must, stealthily and unobserved, have followed the funeral cortege, for since her disappearance on the other side of the stable ruins Boleslav had seen nothing of her. The crowd pushed forward, curious to find out who was struggling on the ground, and Boleslav, promptly taking advantage of the general confusion, passed the combatants and gained the churchyard gate, the coffin following close at his heels.
Behind was heard the report of the gun, which exploded in the hand-to-hand struggle.
"Guard the entrance!" he called to the six who followed the coffin, while the bearers made their way between the mounds and tombstones to the burial vault of the Barons von Schranden.
Karl Engelbert stationed himself as sentinel beneath the gateway, and saw, by aid of the last flicker of the torches as they moved away, how the crowd closed round the wrestling father and daughter.
Three piercing shrieks escaped the girl's lips. Evidently the mob intended to wreak its thwarted fury on her. There seemed little doubt that she would perish at its hands, unless some one came quickly to her help.
"Leave her alone!" cried Engelbert, striking out right and left with his powerful fists. And then the figure, that had been so pitifully mauled and in such dire extremity till he interfered, emerged from the midst of her persecutors. She glided past him, dived into the dry ditch that skirted the churchyard wall, and then disappeared like a shadow, into the darkness. The Schrandeners began, with whoops and hoots, to pursue her.
"How about the burial?" cried one.
"The devil take the burial!" exclaimed another, and cast a shy glance at the men standing on guard by the churchyard gate--men who looked as if they were not to be trifled with. Certainly it was better sport to give chase to a defenceless creature than to risk one's skin in an encounter with them.