"The rascal!" the crowd commented, while the old man, neatly folding and replacing his handkerchief, raised a hand as dry as a cock's leg, and remarked with a sharp, knowing smile:
"Possibly it is not merely out of idle curiosity that folk are making this request."
"Go and be damned to you!" the young fellow exclaimed with a grim snap. Whereupon the big peasant bellowed out in a blustering fashion:
"What? Then you will not tell us at least your destination?"
Whereafter the same speaker continued to hold forth on humanity, God, and the human conscience—staring wildly around him as he did so, waving his arms about, and growing ever more frantic, until really it was curious to watch him.
At length the crowd grew similarly excited, and took to encouraging the speaker with cries of "True! That is so!"
As for the young fellow, he listened awhile in silence, without moving. Then, straightening his back, he rose, thrust his hands into the pockets of his trousers, and, swaying his body to and fro, began to glare at the crowd with greenish eyes which were manifestly lightening to a vicious gleam. At length, thrusting forth his chest, he cried hoarsely:
"So you ask me whither I am bound? I am bound for the brigands' lair, for the brigands' lair, where, unless you first take and put me in fetters, I intend to cut the throat of every man that I meet. Yes, a hundred murders will I commit, for all folk will be the same to me, and not a soul will I spare. Aye, the end of my tether is reached, so take and fetter me whilst you can."
His breath was issuing with difficulty, and as he spoke his shoulders heaved, and his legs trembled beneath him. Also, his face had turned grey and become distorted with tremors.
Upon this, the crowd broke into a gruff, ugly, resentful roar, and edged away from the man. Yet, in doing so, many of its members looked curiously like the man himself in the way that they lowered their heads, caught at their breath, and let their eyes flash. Clearly the man was in imminent danger of being assaulted.