The Battle of the Strong - A Romance of Two Kingdoms

Excerpt: ...of the crowd, strong, angry, determined. From the Rue d'Driere a tall athletic man was hurrying. He had on his shoulders a workman's han basket, from which peeped a ship-builder's tools. Seeing the Chevalier's danger, he dropped his tool-basket through the open window of a house and forced his way through the crowd, roughly knocking from under them the feet of two or three ruffians who opposed him. He reproached the crowd, he berated them, he handled them fiercely. By a dexterous strength he caught the little gentleman up in his arms, and, driving straight on to the open door of the smithy, placed him inside, then blocked the passage with his own body. It was a strange picture: the preacher in an ecstasy haranguing the foolish rabble, who now realised, with an unbecoming joy, that the Last Day was yet to face; the gaping, empty prison; the open windows crowded with excited faces; the church bell from the Vier Marchi ringing an alarm; Norman lethargy roused to froth and fury: one strong man holding two hundred back! Above them all, at a hus in the gable of a thatched cottage, stood the girl whom the Chevalier had recognised, anxiously watching the affray. She was leaning across the lower closed half of the door, her hands in apprehensive excitement clasping her cheeks. The eyes were bewildered, and, though alive with pain, watched the scene below with unwavering intensity. Like all mobs this one had no reason, no sense. They were baulked in their malign intentions, and this man, Maitre Ranulph Delagarde, was the cause of it-that was all they knew. A stone was thrown at Delagarde as he stood in the doorway, but it missed him. Oh-oh-oh! the girl exclaimed, shrinking. O shame! O you cowards! she added, her hands now indignantly beating on the hus. Three or four men rushed forward on Ranulph. He hurled them back. Others came on with weapons. The girl fled for an instant, then reappeared with a musket, as the people were crowding in on Delagarde with...