"But you took the wage of her sin all the same," Boleslav was on the point of interrupting, but recollected in time that in saying so he would be admitting his father's guilt to this pack of wolves.
"'And you are free,' I said. 'You may go where you like, and whoever you meet may kill you outright for all I care. Go to your _gnädigen Herrn_,' I said, 'and ask him to protect you.' I said----"
At this juncture the shouts of the other Schrandeners became so much louder that they drowned the carpenter's speech. They closed round him, and he was lost in the crowd; only his rasping laugh was still audible.
"What did I prophesy, _Herr Baron_?" asked old Merckel, with his unctuous smile.
Boleslav leant against the end of the sofa, and regarded the crew of Schrandeners pressing ever nearer with clenched teeth and unflinching eye.
"If one strikes me," he thought to himself, "the rest will tear me to pieces."
He felt how imperative it was to remain calm.
"Come, you people," he said, making a passage through their ranks with his hands, "let me pass."
And whether it was his commanding air of cool determination, or the cross which shone in his military cap, that awed the tumultuous throng, not one of them attempted to impede his progress. He passed into the thick of the mob, expecting every moment to be struck a fatal blow from behind; but nothing of the sort happened--unchallenged he found himself in the open air. Felix Merckel had kept in the background.
The whole mob, now including women and children, surged after him down the road.
As he reached the parsonage garden, whose white walls blazed in the rays of the mid-day sun, he was aware of an aching sensation at his heart, that rose in a lump to his throat. His last hope rested in the hands of the old pastor. Would he too spurn him from his threshold? But at this moment that was not his only anxiety. How could he help feeling anxious as to what _her_ reception of him would be, she in whose power it was to exalt him from the mire of shame and misery into a world of peace and purity. If she saw him in his present condition, dirty and dishevelled, with this escort of hooting ruffians behind him, would she not recoil in horror?
A terrified hand threw back the glass door of the veranda. It was she--it must be she! For a moment he saw the glimmer of a white, slender figure; saw her raise an arm, as if to wave off the approach of him and the mob: and then, before Boleslav could give one questioning, imploring look at the beloved features, she vanished with a faint cry of alarm.