Page:Anthology of Modern Slavonic Literature in Prose and Verse by Paul Selver.djvu/140

116 human assembly simmered and beat against that pure, sunlit heaven, which hung above the city like a pale, clear-green canopy.

In one of the taverns there was playing and dancing, so that from time to time, through the unholy din and uproar, there penetrated the sound of harmonium and fiddles performing a rustic dance, and the loud, heated outcries of the dancers, but these sounds were soon lost amid the chaos of a brawl which bad broken out in the middle of the market square, by the smoked-meat stalls.

Some dozen or so bodies, writhing and grappling together, scuffed amid yells, and staggered off in all directions, until in the end they tumbled under the stalls into the mud, wallowing and fighting tooth and nail like a huge tangle, swarming with arms, legs, blood-stained faces, projecting tongues, whites of eyes bulging with madness.—"The Promised Land," Vol. I. Ch. 6.