But in a minute the whole multitude had set out to Dominikova’s, like a foaming torrent in spate. The Voytova and Yanek’s mother led them on, and a howling infuriated rabble followed. They burst into the cabin like a tempest. Dominikova blocked the way—she was trampled down in an instant. Andrew sprang forward to her aid, and was knocked down at once. Lastly, Matthew, standing in front of the inner door, strove to keep them back; but in spite of the club he wielded with all his strength, not half a minute elapsed before he was lying close to the wall, unconscious and with a broken head. Yagna had locked and bolted herself up in the alcove. When they burst the door open, she appeared, standing with her back to the wall; but she neither made any defence nor uttered any cry. White as a corpse, with wide-staring eyes, she shook all over in expectation of death. A hundred hands shot out to seize her in their greedy clutches, ravenous with hatred; she was whirled away like a bush torn up by the roots, and dragged out into the enclosure. “Bind her, else she may give us the slip and escape!” the Voytova commanded. By the roadside stood a cart prepared for her, filled to the very top with hogs’-dung, to which cart a couple of black cows had been yoked. Into the dung they tossed her, bound fast and unresisting; and then, in the midst of a deafening uproar—laughter, foul invectives, imprecations—each a stab of murderous intent—the procession set out. It halted at the church, and Kozlova bawled: “Let her be stripped here, and whipped in the porch!” “Aye,” screamed another; “creatures of her kidney were always flogged outside the church.” “Let her be whipped until the blood spurts out!” But Ambrose had bolted the lich-gate, and stood close to the wicket, the priest’s gun in hand; and when they stopped, he bellowed at them: “The first that breaks in here—as I hope for mercy, I’ll shoot him!... I’ll kill him like a dog!” And he looked so grim, so formidable, with his gun ready to fire, that they forbore, and turned aside to the poplar road. They hurried on, for the storm might burst at any moment. The sky had grown still more gloomy; the tall poplars tossed to and fro in the gale; clouds of blinding dust flew up beneath their feet, and far-off thunder rumbled. They cried: “Faster, Pete, faster!” They looked skywards ill at ease, less noisy now, and walking by the roadside, for the middle was deep sand; and only now and then did one or another of her bitterest enemies draw near the cart and shriek: “You swine! You wanton! To the soldiers!—Go, you plague-spotted harlot!” Pete, Boryna’s servant, was driving the cart, for no one else would do so. He walked beside and flogged the cows, and spoke a few words of pity to her, when he could speak them unnoticed. “’Tis not far ... your wrong shall be avenged: suffer now in patience!”