I stood for a time unnoticed, gazing at the scene in a kind of stupor, which the noise and tumult aggravated. Little by little, however, the cool air did its work; memory and reason began to return, and, with anxiety awaking in my breast, I looked round for Herr Krapp. Presently I saw him coming towards me with a leather flask in his hand.

'Drink some of this,' he said, looking at me keenly. 'Why so wild, man?'

'The girl?' I stammered. I had not spoken before since my release, and my voice sounded strange and unnatural.

'She is safe,' he answered, nodding kindly. 'I was at my window when she swung herself on to the roof by the rope which you left hanging. Donner! you may be proud of her! But she was distraught, or she would not have tried such a feat. She must inevitably have fallen if I had not seen her. I called out to her to stand still and hold fast; and my son, who had come upstairs, ran down for a twelve-foot pike. We thrust that out to her, and, holding it, she tottered along the pike to my window, where I caught her skirts, and we dragged her in in a moment.'

I shuddered, remembering how I had suffered, hanging above the yawning street. 'I suppose that it was she who warned you and sent you here?' I said.

'No,' he answered. 'This house had been watched for two days, though I did not tell you so. We had been suspicious of it for a week or more, or I should not have helped you into a neighbour's house as I did. However, all is well that ends well; and though we have not got that bloodthirsty villain to hang, we have stopped his plans for this time.'

He was just proposing that, if I now felt able, I should return to my lady's, when a rush of people from the house almost carried me off my feet. In a moment we were pushed aside and squeezed against the wall. A hoarse yell, like the cry of a wild beast, rose from the crowd, a hundred hands were brandished in the air, weapons appeared as if by magic. The glare of torches, falling on the raging sea of men, picked out here and there a scared face, a wandering eye; but for the most part the mob seemed to feel only one passion--the thirst for blood.

'What is it?' I shouted in Herr Krapp's ear.

'The prisoners,' he answered. 'They are bringing them out. Your friend the Waldgrave, and the other. They will need a guard.'

And truly it was a grim thing to see men make at them, striking over the shoulders of the guard, leaping at them wolf-like, with burning eyes and gnashing teeth, striving to tear them with naked hands. Down the narrow passage to the churchyard the soldiers had an easy task; but in the open graveyard, whither Herr Krapp and I followed slowly, the party were flung this way and that, and tossed to and fro--though they were strong men, armed, and numbered three or four score--like a cork floating on rapids. Their way lay through the Ritter Strasse, and I went with them so far. Though it was midnight, the town, easily roused from its feverish sleep, was up and waking. Scared faces looked from windows, from eaves, from the very roofs. Men who had snatched up their arms and left their clothes peered from doorways. The roar of the mob, as it swayed through narrow ways, rose and fell by turns, now loud as the booming of cavern-waves, now so low that it left the air quivering.