An hour afterwards, when she is at work in the dairy, she hears harsh cries from the Second Compound. Going to the door she sees a shocking scene. The infuriated prisoners, whom she had seen talking to Oskar, augmented by at least a hundred others, are hunting a man as if with the intention of lynching him. They are shouting and gesticulating, and the man is screaming. They have torn his coat off, and the upper part of his body is almost naked. He is running to and fro as if trying to escape from his pursuers, and they are beating him as he flies and kicking him when he falls. The soldiers on guard at the gate of the compound are racing to the man’s relief and threatening with their rifles, but the rifles are being wrenched out of their hands and turned against them. The clamour is fearful. The whole compound is in wild disorder. “The thief! The cheat! Search him! Strip him!” Without waiting to think what she is doing, but with a frightful apprehension of danger to Oskar, Mona runs into the compound (there being no one at the gate to prevent her), and with her strong arms, which are bare to the elbows, she struggles through the mob of drunken men. “Stop! Stand back! You brutes!” More from the sound of her voice than from the strength of her muscles the prisoners fall away and she reaches their victim. He is on the ground at her feet, bleeding about the face and head and crying for mercy. It is the captain of the guard! When the miserable creature sees who has rescued him he squirms to her feet and calls on her to save him. A body of the guard from another compound come running up and carry him away, and the infuriated men slink off to the cover of their quarters. Later in the day Mona hears that six of the prisoners have been arrested and sent to the lock-up at Peel and that Oskar Heine is one of them. Still later she learns that they are to be brought up for trial in the morning. What is Oskar to be charged with? Mona has not been summoned, but she decides to go to the trial. She has a presentiment of something evil that is to happen to her there, but all the same she determines to go. _EIGHTH CHAPTER_ Mona rises next day before the cows have begun to call, and as soon as her work in the dairy is done she hurries off to Peel. The court-house is as crowded as before with guards and townspeople. With difficulty she crushes her way into the last place by the door. The proceedings have begun and the prisoners are standing in the dock with their backs to her--five unkempt heads of common-looking sailors and Oskar’s erect figure, with his fair hair, at the end of them. The Governor is on the bench, and he has the High Bailiff and the Commandant on either side of him. The captain of the guard, with a bandage across his forehead, is in the witness-box. He is answering the questions of the advocate for the Crown. “And now, Captain, tell us your own story.”