Page:Harris Dickson--The black wolf's breed.djvu/110

90 speaking but a few moments since. I fain would have assisted him, for the damsel appeared woefully beset, but the whole throng of mincing lords and screaming ladies, in the rankest riot, over-ran me. They swept me from my feet and bore me back to the farthest wall, where I found myself pinned tight and fast against a window.

What the danger was I could not see, but it must have been dolorous from the headlong terror of their flight. Soon by the thinning of the crowd through the doors I saw the cause. It was a motley and a moving spectacle. For by some mischance a flock of sheep had broken into the ball-room, and frightened out of their shallow senses by the lights and music, they rushed pell-mell here and there, upsetting without discrimination whatever stood in their path.

Verily such an onset would do brave work against an enemies' ranks, for could our knights but make a gap like that, an army of children might march through unhindered. All went down alike before their charge, my lord and my lady, the Prince of the Blood, and the humblest page who bore his pouncet box. Such a slipping and a sliding across a floor slickened with much wax and polishing, was never in a ball room before, nor ever was again. One old ram regarded each mirror as a certain avenue of escape, and the radiating fracture of each taught him no greater wisdom concerning the others.

Standing spellbound as a statue in the midst of the ruins, I caught sight of a florid, rotund lady, speechless in her horror and her misery.