"I say--I say--I say--" gathering stress, louder and louder it shrieked until the very air curdled with these eery cries. "I say--you there, you there--you God--you God--I say the law's here--the law's here--the law, the law, the law I say--hear me?--hiding, hiding?--no, no, no, I have never hidden from men--I'll not hide now from my God--I'm here now, God--'Thou shalt not kill--thou shalt not kill'--but I done it--I done this--these hands done it--see, God? They are wet with this deed--but I swear the law drove me to it--the law saddled a hundred offenses to my life--but I'm here now, God--I bring these offenses here--I done it--I done it--these hands done it--these two blood-stained hands--the law made me--I swear it--listen--you can't get me--you can't rend me--you starved heathens--stand back--stand back, you dungeon-dogs--stand away there, you ratty jail-birds--you can't get at me, ha, ha, ha!--gnaw your iron cuffs apart first--bite your cuffs in two--gnaw them until your teeth shatter, and your gums flood your felon throats--ha, ha, ha!--Oh, my head, my head--Christ, the world's afire--the world's burning up--listen--listen----!" Hereupon the screech-owl awoke to quick animation. With trembling wings slightly lifted, it thrust its head through the broken window-pane and uttered a scathing arraignment--a long-drawn, graduating, derisive titter that raked the ghoulish solitude of the church like perdition-music--a mockery medley wafted from a cortege of the doomed. As the last prickly notes dropped down and trailed like a thread of sin back into the owl's speckled breast, the gory raw-head blundered around and fixed that mawkish, ghastly hell-mask full upon the girl and two boys, whose feet were locked immovably to the floor with terror. Then in emulation, seemingly, of the owl's tittering, it belched its awful laugh into their faces. Such a laugh--its chilling, unhallowed screech launched a petrific measure of untold vocal wickedness, an awesome, direful gamut of echoes that gathered volume, scattered and split, crossed and recrossed; reverberating through the death-still atmosphere like the hysterical chattering of a band of stricken, tortured souls. CHAPTER XXXIX THE FLIGHT Human senses could not withstand such an onslaught. It startled the three to instant action. The tide of self-preservation ebbed back into their bodies; with one accord they reared their arms upward across their faces to ward off the shock of that accursed sound, as though its very effluvium scorched its scar into their flesh. There was an utterance of mingled gasps. There was a sudden rush of jumbled, panic-stricken footsteps. A tumbling, scrapping, frantic confusion. A groan--a half scream--a sob and the door banged. The church was empty, save for the mumbling, croaking, mad lazar.