And on a sudden, like leaves by the wind, all these were driven
before the silent throngs of the oppressed; and they were innumerable as
the sands of the sea. Their thin faces were earthy with want and
cavernous from disease, and their eyes were dull with despair. They
passed in their tattered motley, some in the fantastic rags of the
beggars of Albrecht Duerer and some in the grey cerecloths of Le Nain;
many wore the blouses and the caps of the rabble in France, and many the
dingy, smoke-grimed weeds of English poor. And they surged onward like a
riotous crowd in narrow streets flying in terror before the mounted
troops. It seemed as though all the world were gathered there in strange
confusion.
Then all again was void; and Margaret's gaze was riveted upon a great,
ruined tree that stood in that waste place, alone, in ghastly desolation;
and though a dead thing, it seemed to suffer a more than human pain. The
lightning had torn it asunder, but the wind of centuries had sought
in vain to drag up its roots. The tortured branches, bare of any twig,
were like a Titan's arms, convulsed with intolerable anguish.
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