"I would have taken you to the theatre," he said laughingly, "but we shall see something prettier here. They are firing their rifles, it appears. Do not let us miss the play when we can have good seats for nothing. And mind you bring that kummel, for it is the best in Europe."
They were just lighting the great arc lamps upon the avenue as the two emerged from the dining-room and took up their stations by the railing of the balcony. In the roadway below the spectacle had become superb in its weird drama and excited ferocity. Great crowds passed incessantly upon the broad pavements and were as frequently dispersed by the fiery Cossacks who rode headlong as though mad with the lust of slaughter. Holding all who were abroad to be their enemies, these fellows slashed with their brutal whips at every upturned face and had no pity even for the children. Alban saw little lads of ten and twelve years of age carried bleeding from the streets--he beheld gentle women cut and lashed until they fell dying upon the pavement--he heard the death-cry from many a human throat. Just as the exiles had related it, so the drama went, with a white-faced, terror-stricken mob for the people of its scene and these devils upon their little horses for the chief actors. When the troopers fell (and from time to time a bullet would find its billet and leave a corpse rolling in a saddle) this was but the signal for a new outburst, surpassing the old in its diabolical ferocity. A very orgy of blood and slaughter; a Carnival of whips cutting deep into soft white flesh and drawing from their victims cries so awful that they might have risen up from hell itself.
And in this crowd, among this people perhaps, little Lois Boriskoff must be looked for. Her friends would be the people's friends. Wayward as she was, a true child of the streets, Alban did not believe that she would remain at home this night or consent to forego the excitements of a spectacle so wonderful. Nor in this was he mistaken, for he had been but a very few minutes upon the balcony when he perceived Lois herself looking up to him from the press below and plainly intimating that she had both seen and recognized him.