The clerk vaulted the desk and sprang into the street, and I dragged the
boy back to the wire rope and we shot to the third story. The boy shrank
back. A chambermaid, crouching against the wall, her face colorless,
lowered one hand, and pointed at an open door.

"In there," she whispered.

In a mean, common room, stretched where he had been struck back upon the
bed, I found the boy who had elected to meddle in the "problems of two
governments."

In tiny jets, from three wide knife-wounds, his blood flowed slowly. His
staring eyes were lifted up in fear and in entreaty. I knew that he was
dying, and as I felt my impotence to help him, I as keenly felt a great
rage and a hatred toward those who had struck him.

I leaned over him until my eyes were only a few inches from his face.

"Schnitzel!" I cried. "Who did this? You can trust me. Who did this?
Quick!"

I saw that he recognized me, and that there was something which, with
terrible effort, he was trying to make me understand.

In the hall was the rush of many people, running, exclaiming, the noise
of bells ringing; from another floor the voice of a woman shrieked
hysterically.

At the sounds the eyes of the boy grew eloquent with entreaty, and with
a movement that called from each wound a fresh outburst, like a man