The prison van was seen to cross the bridge, and as it came up to the gate, it was received with a howl of execration.
Stowell heard it. In his dark compartment the surging of the crowd around the outside of the van was like the breaking of a tidal wave on a sleeping town in the middle of the night. The van stopped with a sickening jolt, and he heard the Inspector of Police crying,
"Stand back! Make way!"
Then there was a flash of daylight and the voice of the Chief Constable saying peremptorily,
"Come, get out! Be quick about it."
At the next moment he was on the ground with a roar of hoarse voices and a rush of contorted faces around him. There were screams of lewd laughter and yells of merciless derision. Arms were raised as if to strike him. He felt himself being pushed and pulled by the police through the open gate and up the passage way to the Portcullis.
The crowd, not yet appeased, tried to force their way past the jailer and his turnkeys as if to lynch him. But they were checked by an unexpected sight. A young woman, in the costume of a nurse, with heaving breast, quivering nostrils, and flaming eyes, rushed through the gate with outstretched arms to stop them.
They recognised her instantly, but it was not that alone that cowed them. There is something in a brave act which pierces the noisiest crowd to the core of its cruel soul. Certainly this crowd fell back and its uproar died down.
Then in a voice which vibrated with contempt and scorn, Fenella tried to speak to them.
"You .... you .... you...." she began, but further words would not come, and returning to the Castle she clashed its iron-studded gate in the people's faces.