and betraying, at present at least, no desire to take an active
part in what was going on.

We hurriedly plunged into the throng, and soon caught the clue to
the quietness and the lack of movement which seemed to prevail,
and which at first sight had puzzled us. For a moment the
absence of the dreadful symptoms we had come to know so well--the
flying and pursuing, the random blows, the shrieks and curses and
batterings on doors, the tipsy yells, had reassured us. But the
relief was short-lived. The people before us were under control.
A tighter grip seemed to close upon our hearts as we discerned
this, for we knew that the wild fury of the populace, like the
rush of a bull, might have given some chance of escape--in this
case as in others. But this cold-blooded ordered search left
none.

Every face about us was turned in the same direction; away from
the river and towards a block of old houses which stood opposite
to it. The space immediately in front of these was empty, the
people being kept back by a score or so of archers of the guard
set at intervals, and by as many horsemen, who kept riding up and
down, belabouring the bolder spirits with the flat of their
swords, and so preserving a line. At each extremity of this--more
noticeably on our left where the line curved round the angle of
the buildings--stood a handful of riders, seven in a group
perhaps. And alone in the middle of the space so kept clear,
walking his horse up and down and gazing at the houses rode a man
of great stature, booted and armed, the feather nodding in his
bonnet. I could not see his face, but I had no need to see it.
I knew him, and groaned aloud. It was Bezers!