"The priest is mad!" cried Loris. "For three years he has incited us to enmity against the Jews and now he pleads their cause. On with the work! We have much to do before night."
"In the name of his majesty, I command you to cease!" yelled the priest, in a hoarse voice.
"In the name of the Governor of Kief, I command you to go on!" shouted Loris. "Down with Rabbi Winenki and his family! Down with the miserable race that killed our Saviour!"
The battering at the door was resumed with renewed vigor. A cry of triumph announced to the crowd that the barrier was down, and a portion of the infuriated mob rushed into the house.
In vain did Mikail circulate among the men, by turns commanding and pleading, to induce them to desist from their work of destruction.
They looked at him askance and then at each other, significantly. But yesterday this same priest spurred them on to vengeance, filling them with passion against the people whose cause he now espoused.
"He is mad," they whispered, and turning their backs upon him, they continued their excesses.
Loris had in the meantime entered the room in which he had kneeled to the beautiful Kathinka.
The Rabbi with his aged father and a number of beardless youths, pupils of his school, guarded the door leading to the inner room, in which the women and girls had taken refuge. They had armed themselves with chairs and whatever happened to be within reach, and with these primitive weapons they expected to hold the enemy in check. As well endeavor to stay the flood of the mighty Dnieper with a net drawn across its stream! The mob charged upon them with an impetus that could not be resisted. The Rabbi, single-handed, felled two powerful moujiks; then he himself fell bleeding to the floor. His gray-bearded father was dealt a blow on the head from a stout cudgel, and he lay upon the ground in the agonies of death. The young men seeing that resistance but increased their peril, threw down their weapons and fled, leaving the inner room with its helpless inmates in the hands of the rioters.
Loris was the first to enter, and his companions were not slow in following his example. A number of maidens, crazed with horror, sprang from the windows, only to fall into the arms of the rabble without. Three of the women were killed in the heroic struggle for their honor and not less than twenty suffered indignities worse than death.