The noise was less down in the streets. The houses intervened and deadened it. At some of the doors women were standing, listening and looking out with grey faces, but one and all fled in at our approach, which seemed to be the signal, wherever we came, for barring doors and shooting bolts; once a man took to his heels before us, and again near the locksmith's we encountered a woman bare-headed and carrying something in her arms. She almost ran into the midst of us, and at the last moment only avoided us by darting up the side-alley by the forge. Whether these people knew us for what we were, and so fled from us, or took us for a party of the rioters, it was impossible to say. The narrow lanes were growing dark, night was falling on the town; only the over-hanging eaves showed clear and black against a pale sky. The way we had to go was short, but it seemed long to me; for a dozen times between the castle steps and Klink's house I thought of the poor girl at her prayers, and pictured what might be happening.

Yet we could not have been more than five minutes going from the steps to the corner beyond the forge, whence we could see Klink's side window. A red glare shone though it, and cleaving the dark mist which filled the alley fell ruddily on the town wall. It seemed to say that we were too late; and my heart sank at the sight. Nor at the sight only, for as we turned the corner, the hoarse murmur we had heard on the Terrace, and which even there had sounded ominous, swelled to an angry roar, made up of cries and cursing, with bursts of reckless cheering, and now and again a yell of pain. The street away before us, where the lane ran into it, was full of smoky light and upturned faces; but I took no heed of it, my business was with the window. I cried to the men behind me and hurried on till I stood before it, and clutching the bars--the glass was broken long ago--looked in.

The room was full of men. For a moment I could see nothing but heads and shoulders and grim faces, all crowded together, and all alike distorted by the lurid light shed by a couple of torches held close to the ceiling. Some of the men standing in such groups as the constant jostling permitted, were talking, or rather shouting to one another. Others were savagely forcing back their fellows who wished to enter; while a full third were gathered with their faces all one way round the corner where I had seen the sick man. Here the light was strongest, and in this direction I gazed most anxiously. But the crowded figures intercepted all view; neither there nor anywhere else could I detect any sign of the girl or child. The men in that corner seemed to be gazing at something low down on the floor, something I could not see. A few were silent, more were shouting and gesticulating.

I stretched my hands through the bars, and grasping a man by the shoulders, dragged him to me. 'What is it?' I cried in his ear, heedless whether he knew me, or took me for one of the ruffians who were everywhere battling to get into the house--at the window we had anticipated some by a second only. 'What is it?' I repeated fiercely, resisting all his efforts to get free.

'Nothing!' he answered, glaring at me. 'The man is dead; cannot you see?'

'I can see nothing!' I retorted. 'Dead is he?'

'Ay, dead, and a good job too!' the rascal answered, making a fresh attempt to get away. 'Dead when we came in.'

'And the girl?'

'Gone, the Papist witch, on a broomstick!' he answered. 'Through the wall or the ceiling or the keyhole, or through this window; but only on a broomstick. The bars would skin a cat!'

I let him go and looked at the bars. They were an inch thick, and a very few inches apart. It seemed impossible that a child, much more a grown woman, could pass between them. As the fellow said, there was barely room for a cat to pass.