Page:Balkan Short Stories.djvu/71

Rh “A madman from Golia — escaped.”

“Let's close up so he can't attack us.”

“Oh, they've bound him. But before they did it, he beat the soldiers. The bad tempered Christians shoved a Jew out of the crowd, and the madman bit him on the cheek.”

From the front steps Leiba has a fine vantage point from which to see. On the step below Sura stands holding the baby.

There he goes—the madman whom two soldiers are trying to hold. His arms are bound by strong ropes. The man has the body of a giant. His head is just like a bull's; black, thick-curled. Hair covers his face—dark, in disorder. What a mass of hair covers his head! He is bare-footed; he keeps spitting blood and the hair he bit from the cheek of the Jew. Now the crowd pauses. What is the trouble?

The soldiers free the madman. The people step aside and make an open space about him. The madman pauses and sweeps the circle with his eyes, which at length pause by Zibal's door. He gnashes his teeth, then darts for the steps. In the space of a second he seizes the head of the baby with his