The vision of a hideous leering face leading the quarterstaves decided her on complying. The next instant she felt herself thrust into a dark entry, and ere the door closed, heard a scream of terrified rage from her horse, as some one cut it over the flank with his staff. The outrage made her temper leap up fiercely, and she felt inclined to confront the offender; but before she could reach the door it was shut and hasped in her face. Then the desire to escape from darkness and see--see something, no matter what--possessed her, and she groped round for some means of exit. Ah! a flight of steep steps, black as pitch, narrow, broken; she climbed up, and up, till a grating in the wall shed a glimmer of light on the winding stair; up further, till she emerged on a balcony overlooking the street, whence she could see far into the alley on one side and into the square on the other. Beneath her feet lay a small empty space edged by the opposing factions hurrying into collision. "Give way! Give way, idolaters! Hussan! Hussain! _Futeh Mahommed_ (Victory of Mahomed)," yelled the _tazzia_-bearers. "_Jai, Jai, Durga Devi, de-jai!_ Give way, killers of kine," shouted the Hindus. For an instant or two Belle's horse, hemmed in by the advancing crowds, kept the peace by clearing a space between them with head and heels; then, choosing the least alarming procession, it charged the Hindus, breaking their ranks as, maddened by terror it plunged and bit. Only for a moment, however, for the packed mass of humanity closing in round it, held it harmless as in a vice. "The charger of Pertâp!"[4] cried a huge rice-husker with ready wit, as he leapt to the saddle, and coming rather to grief over the crutches, raised a roar of derision from the other side. He scowled dangerously. "Come on, brothers!" he cried, digging his heels viciously into the trembling, snorting beast. "Down with the cursed slayers of kine. This is Durga-ji's road,--_Dhurm! Dhurm!_" "Hussan,--Hussain!"