Sounds of alarm from time to time, shouts and other noises, were heard in the echoing streets, then followed the tolling of an alarm bell, and the beating of the Prussian drums, while flames began to redden the sky in one quarter, thus indicating that the houses of some persons obnoxious to the rabble had been set on fire outside the Holstein Thor. Despite the advice of the landlord and the waiters, Trevor Chute remained on the steps at the hotel door, enjoying a cigar, and determined to see what was going on, though but little was visible, as in the streets the rioters had turned off the gas. Ere long he could make out something like the head of a great column debouching over the open space before the hotel. For a moment nothing could be distinguished but that it was a crowd, shadows moving in the shade, but accompanied by a roar of sounds, cheers, hoarse hurrahs, oaths and imprecations in German, with the patois of Schleswig and of Holstein. The rabble, consisting of many thousands, were in readiness to commit outrage on anyone or anything that came in their way, and were now in fierce pursuit of an open droski that was brought at a gallop up to the door of the hotel, and out of which there sprang, looking very pale and bewildered, Sir Carnaby Collingwood and Lady Evelyn, whom the crowd had overtaken when returning from a visit to one of the three Syndics. Above the heads of the grimy rabble seven or eight torches were shaking like tufts of flame, and by their uncertain glare added much to the terror of the scene, for a madly infuriated mob has terrors that are peculiarly its own, and the simple circumstance that Sir Carnaby and Lady Evelyn were the occupants of a hired vehicle was sufficient to make all these half-starved and tipsified boors--tipsy with beer and fiery corn-brandy--turn their vengeance on them. Even while rushing alongside the fast-flying wheels--for the driver lashed his horses to a gallop--they could see that Sir Carnaby was an aristocrat, an _hochgeboren_, or well-born man; that was enough to ensure insult and ridicule, or worse, and all the more when they discovered that he was an Englishman--and, like a true Englishman, the baronet, with all his folly and shortcomings in many ways, did not want a proper amount of pluck. All that passed now seemed to do so with the quickness of lightning. Sir Carnaby, highly exasperated by what he had undergone, and the terror of Lady Evelyn, instead of retiring at once into the hotel, unwisely turned and struck the foremost man in the crowd a sharp blow across the face with his cane. The voices of the crowd now burst into one united roar of senseless rage, and a piercing and agonising shriek escaped Lady Evelyn, as she saw him seized by many hands, torn from her side, and dragged violently along the streets, amid shouts of 'To the Trave!--to the Trave!'