bursting before and at that had become still worse, because all the souls had thronged against him in terror, beseeching him to protect them. And, roughly, rudely, like the unfeeling brutes that they were, the fat landlady and her lout of a brother had dragged him upstairs between them; and, as they dragged him, they had trodden not only on his bare feet but also on the poor souls! Their vulgar slippers, their clumsy, caddish feet had trodden on the poor, poor tender souls, trodden on them in the passage and along the stairs; and he heard them panting and sobbing, so loudly, so loudly, in their mortal anguish, that he could not understand why the whole town had not come running up in sheer alarm, to see the poor souls and help them. Oh, how they had moaned and gnashed their teeth, oh, how they had sobbed and lamented, most terribly!
And nobody had come. Nobody would hear. They had refused to hear, those townsfolk; no rescue had arrived; and the two brutes, that fat landlady and that wretched cad of a fellow, her brother, had hauled him along, up the stairs, into his room, had flung him in, locked the door behind him and barricaded the door on the outside. And in the passage, caught in the front-door, on the landing, caught in the door of his room, lay the poor panting, sobbing souls; they lay trodden and trampled, as if a rough crowd had danced on those tender gossamer beings, on their frail bodies; and he had
