Comstock came to a sudden decision, as a ferocious and even more elderly woman than most reached forward and ripped the girl's dress from her neck to her navel, screeching, "The hussy! Put her in the stocks! I've got a stone for her! A big one ... perhaps one of you young sirs would help me throw it?" She looked about her coquettishly and her plea did not fall on empty air. Running around the outer perimeter of the mob, Comstock made his way to the statue of the kindly-faced Grandfather. Skirting the stocks which were ugly and dull with the blood that had so many times defaced them, Comstock reached up and pulled himself into the lap of the stone Grandfather. From that point of vantage he yelled, "Stop!" His voice squeaked a little of course and did not come out with quite the roar that he had wanted it to, but it was enough, it served to halt the mob in its tracks. Down below him, the girl, naked to the waist, her torn gown hanging from the belt that was all that retained the shreds of cloth that remained from the old woman's tearing hands, looked up at him. The sight of her bare b.....s was almost too much for Comstock. It unmanned him momentarily, but raising his eyes to her face, and seeing the courage that shone from her eyes, he recovered his lost voice and this time it came out with a roar, as he yelled, "Sanctuary! I claim the right of sanctuary for this girl and myself!" * * * * * It had been over four hundred years since last a human voice had claimed that right. But in an ancestor-directed culture like his, Comstock was sure that since old things were automatically the best things, his plea would _have_ to be honored. Once having claimed sanctuary and while in the lap of the Grandfather, no one, not even the R.A., would tear you from that sacred place. The mob was not at all happy, but it surrendered as he had been sure it would. The girl was passed up to him. His hands reaching down for her, were gladdened by the soft silkiness of her skin as he pulled her to him. Once she too was seated next to him in that broad capacious lap, the first thing she did, and he was sorry to see it happen, was to pull the shreds of her garment close around her. Down below them the crowd was not silent. It looked up, and after a while its many faces merged into one, a fearful, frightening visage with one big voice that chanted, "You have sanctuary. We cannot deny you that. But sooner or later you must leave for you must eat and drink ... and when you do...." And when they did, Comstock knew, they'd be torn to shreds. For the anger which formerly had been noisy and quarrelsome, was now quiet and, if anything, even more menacing than the noise had been. But it would be a long time before he and the girl were forced to leave their sanctuary, and looking at her face, he decided that if he had to die, there were worse ways to go.