sting them into a
cupboard, he threw on without a moment's delay, trousers, a coat that
buttoned up, and a pair of European shoes, thrust a cap on his head, and
then ran downstairs again. Fortunately the column, after defeating its
assailants, had paused for two or three minutes, while the soldiers
broke into the houses from which they had been fired upon and slew all
they found in them, and its head was still a hundred yards away when
Edgar looked cautiously out. He had time to throw off his coat and to
hastily bandage the wound in his arm, from which the blood had been
streaming down; then as he heard the tramp of the advancing column he
ran down to the door, and as the troops came up, waved his hand, danced
as if for joy, and shouted a welcome in Italian, mingled with a few
words of French, pouring at the same time a voluble string of
maledictions on the ruffians who had killed his master and his two
comrades. A mounted officer riding at the head of the column shouted to
him to go in and to remain quiet, saying that there was no fear that he
would be molested now. Edgar drew back a little, but remained at the
door, sometimes shouting encouragement to the soldiers, sometimes
apparently weeping convulsively, and acting as if half out of his mind
with relief at his deliverance.

As soon as the column had passed he returned upstairs, bandaged his
wound much more carefully than before, put on a shirt, and chose the
best garments that he could find. All these had no doubt belonged to the
proprietor, and he now went boldly out and followed the French column.
These met with very slight resistance on their road towards the Mosque
of Gama El Ashar. When they neared this spot they halted until the other
columns should reach the point of attack. Before they had left the
square General Gonmartin had moved round from Boulak with ten guns and
taken post on the height near Fort Dupres, and at mid-day thirty guns
from this fort and the citadel opened fire on the town. As it was known
to the French that great numbers of the fugitives from the cemetery had
fled to the mosque, where already a strong body of armed men were
assembled, it was deemed imprudent to attack it until secure that there
was no danger of a great mass of the insurgents falling upon them while
so engaged.

Shells fell fast on the mosque, and fires broke out in several parts of
the town. Edgar joined a group of several civilians, who, having either
been hidden durin