There were shouts; voices called hoarsely.
Lamps began to gleam in the windows.

Half-clad people emerged from their houses, men slapping their braces on their shoulders as they ran out of doors.

Questions were shouted into the dimness.
Then the news went over the town.
It was cried from yard to yard, from group to group, from gate to gate, and reached the furthermost confines.

Runners shouted it as they sped by; boys panted it, breathless; women with loosened hair stumbled into darkling chambers and faltered it out to new-wakened sleepers; pale girls clutching wraps at their throats whispered it across fences; the sick, tossing on their hard beds, heard it.

The bell clamored it far and near; it spread over the country-side; it flew over the wires to distant cities.