"Would I be here for a fancy?" she whispered. "Believe what I say:
after this there shall be no Judenhetze."

The courtyard was a large one, penned between a couple of houses, and
separated from the street by the wall which the great gate pierced.
From it half a dozen doors led into the houses, each a possible road
of escape when the hour should come. Truda looked about her calmly.

The people were standing about in large groups--men, women, and
children--and they spoke in whispers among themselves. But all of
them were listening; each sound from without stiffened them to scared
attention. From somewhere distant there traveled a dull noise of
shouts and singing, a confused blatancy of far voices; and as it
swelled and sank and swelled again, a tremor ran over that silent
waiting throng like a wind-ripple on standing crops. Overhead the
sky shone with pin-point stars; a breath of air stirred about them
faintly; all seemed keyed to that tense furtive quiet of the doomed
Jews. Not a child cried, not a woman sobbed; they had learned,
direfully enough, the piteous art of the oppressed--the knack of
silence and concealment.

It was by slow degrees that the distant shoutings came nearer; the
mob had yet to unite in purpose and ferocity. Truda, listening, and
marking its approach, could almost tell by the violence of its noise
how it wound through the streets, staggering drunkenly, waving
bludgeons, working itself to the necessary point of brutal fury. And
always it grew nearer. Its note changed and deepened, till it sank to
a long snarling drone; she, wise in the moods of men in the mass, a
practicer on the minds of multitudes, knew the moment was at hand;