“Open your mouth!  Open your mouth!” they cried, in rage or entreaty.

The kneeling captive shook his head, and made some reply, very distinct and simple.

“Open your mouth!” They struck at him with the torches.  The same sword that had slashed the curtain now pricked his naked chest.  Rudolph, clenching his fists in a helpless longing to rush out and scatter all these men-at-arms, had a strange sense of being transported into the past, to watch with ghostly impotence a mediaeval tragedy.

The kneeling man repeated his unknown declaration.  His round, honest, oily face was anything but heroic, and wore no legendary, transfiguring light.  He seemed rather stupid than calm; yet as he mechanically wound his queue into place once more above the shaven forehead, his fingers moved surely and deftly.  Not once did they slip or tremble.

“Open your mouth!” snarled the pikemen and the torch-bearers, with the fierce gestures of men who have wasted time and patience.

“The Lamp of Heaven!” bawled the swordsman, beside himself.  “Give him the Lamp of Heaven!”

To the others, this phrase acted as a spark to powder.

“Good! good!” they shrilled, nodding furiously.  “The Lamp of Heaven!” And several men began to rummage and overhaul the chaos of the go-down.  Rudolph had given orders, that afternoon, to remove all necessary stores to the nunnery.  But from somewhere in the darkness, one rioter brought a sack of flour, while another flung down a tin case of petroleum.  The sword had no sooner cut the sack across and punctured the tin, than a fat villain in a loin cloth, squatting on the earthen floor, kneaded flour and oil into a grimy batch of dough.

“Will you speak out and live,” cried the swordsman, “or will you die?”

For a second the Christian did not stir.  Then, as though the option were not in his power,—­

“Die,” he answered.

The fat baker sprang up, and clapped on the obstinate head a shapeless gray turban of dough.  Half a dozen torches jostled for the honor of lighting it.  The Christian, crowned with sooty flames, gave a single cry, clear above all the others.  He was calling—­as even Rudolph knew—­on the strange god across the sea, Saviour of the Children of the West, not to forget his nameless and lonely servant.

Rudolph groaned aloud, rose, and had parted the curtain to run out and fall upon them all, when suddenly, close at hand and sharp in the general din, there burst a quick volley of rifleshots.  Splinters flew from the attap walls.  A torch-bearer and the man with the sword spun half round, collided, and fell, the one across the other, like drunken wrestlers.  The survivors flung down their torches and ran, leaping and diving over bales.  On the ground, the smouldering Lamp of Heaven showed that its wearer, rescued by a lucky bullet, lay still in a posture of humility.  Strange humility, it seemed, for one so suddenly given the complete and profound wisdom that confirms all faith, foreign or domestic, new or old.