But with the third man in the line it was different. He was young. In spite of the grotesqueness of his attire--he was clad in ill-assorted, ragged and tattered oddments of somebody else's clothing--there was something in his bearing which suggested that he was still a man. These others were but torsos. And although the hair beneath his greasy cap stood in crying need of both a barber and a brush, and there was an untrimmed, unsightly growth upon his cheeks and chin, a shrewd observer might have ventured on a small wager that if his hair had been cut and trimmed and he had been shaved and washed, he would not be altogether ugly.
One thing was noticeable, that though the woman stared at him he took no heed at all of her--he did not take his eyes off the man in front of him; and that although the woman kept step beside him in a manner which the others began to mark. All at once, as if moved by an overmastering impulse, she stretched out her umbrella and touched him on the shoulder.
"Hullo!"
That was all she said, but it was enough; he turned his head. At the sight of the eyes which glanced at her out of that dreadful face she started again, not without excuse. This was the face of one of those men of whom society has good reason to go in terror. Desperation was in every line of it; something like madness was in the eyes. This was the face of a man who had suffered much, and who, if opportunity offered, would stick at nothing to get even with those who had made him suffer.
He looked at the woman with, at first, no sign of recognition in his glance. Then, a muscle moved; something came into his eyes which had not been there before; all at once the fashion of his countenance was changed. He stopped, bringing those behind him to sudden confusion. He turned, the better to look at her; beyond doubt this was a woman of nerve, or she would have shrunk from that which was on his face. One felt that if, in that first wild moment, he had not been impeded by the boards which bound him, he would have laid violent hands upon her, and she would have fared ill.
But the boards did bind him. With them there he could do nothing but stand and stare. She met his gaze unflinchingly. Not only did she show no sign of concern at the threat which was in it, something in the expression of her own face suggested that it occasioned her positive pleasure. Certainly she could not have been more completely at her ease.
"Take those things off and come with me."
The man glared at her as if he wondered if his senses were playing him a trick.
"Come with you?"
It was an interrogation conveying, it would seem, a world of meaning. She smiled; at sight of the smile the gleam in his eyes grew more pronounced, his face more threatening. But she was in no way troubled.