A high police functionary attempted to quiet the excitement, and discreet hands bore the unconscious man out to a sledge, and drove him to the hospital.  All the excited wrath of the crowd was turned against the perpetrator of the deed, who was led out strongly guarded.

For safety’s sake, out in the gate, irons were put on both his hands and his feet, and this was done in the midst of an ever-increasing crowd from the street.

But when there was a mention of taking him into the sledge, the girl threw herself upon him, and clung so tightly that it was impossible to tear her away.  She still cried and clung to him, much to the delight and amusement of the assembled crowd of boys, after they had got him into the sledge.

It was impossible for them to start, although they dragged and pulled at her till the gathers of her dress gave way.

The boys shouted.

“Pull—­tear—­drag the clothes off my back!”

“There, have a little common-sense, lass!” said one of the constables.

“You mustn’t take him!  You sha’n’t take him!”

She wrenched and pulled at his handcuffs.

“It’s my fault!  Can’t you tell them so, Nikolai?” she cried piercingly, and the policemen took the opportunity to detach her hands.

The sledge dashed off, and Silla, without a shawl, after it, followed by a swarm of boys.

She saw the door of the police-station open for Nikolai without being able to reach him or hinder it; hour after hour she passed outside, listening and waiting, while the constables again and again intimated to her that she must go home.

When at length she wandered away in despair, she kept stopping; but up on the bridge over the waterfall she stood still a long while.

It roared so strangely down there in the dark.  It seemed as if in some way or other she belonged to it.

All night she lay with a dull feeling of what had happened, and writhed under an unspeakable terror for the result of Nikolai’s act.

Now and then she groaned out a suffering sigh.

She could not get rid of the sight of the handcuffs, and in her delirium felt the cold iron still in her hands, until at last the bitter feeling came over her of how miserably she had behaved to him.  She felt as though the thought of her must make Nikolai sick.

She lay staring at herself as in a vision—­how she had gone about and never thought or cared about anything but her own pleasure, while Nikolai, her smith boy, with the strong arms and the true eyes, who now sat behind the prison bolts, had striven and toiled, and saved, and worked for both of them, so that they might be together.

And she could see too, now, all at once, as if scales had fallen from her eyes, that he had been terribly afraid for her.

If only he still cared for her!  He had said:  “Go home, Silla”—­twice—­so kindly and gently, that she began to cry when she thought of it.