On the pavement lay bodies of men and women slain in some midnight outrage.

From behind the lattices of the windows they caught sight of the eyes of hundreds peeping at them, but none gave them a good-morrow, or said one single word.

The silence of death seemed to brood upon the empty thoroughfares.

Presently it was broken by a single wailing voice that reached their ears from so far away that they could not catch its meaning.

Nearer and nearer it came, till at length in the dark and narrow street they caught sight of a thin, white-bearded figure, naked to the waist as though to show the hideous scars and rod-weals with which its back and breast were scored, still festering, some of them.