hall get it!"

Our mother and Frau Beyer had seen and heard him too, and the firing in
the direction of which the upholsterer and his companions were running
was very near.

The fight must already be raging in Leipzigerstrasse.

At last the porter came back and announced that barricades had been built
at the corner of Mauer-and Friedrichstrasse, and that a violent conflict
had broken out there and in other places between the soldiers and the
citizens. And our Martha was in Friedrichstrasse, and did not come. We
lived beyond the gate, and it was not to be expected that fighting would
break out in our neighbourhood; but back of our gardens, in the vicinity
of the Potsdam railway station, the beating of drums was heard. The
firing, however, which became more and more violent, was louder than any
other noise; and when we saw our mother wild with anxiety, we, too, began
to be alarmed for our dear, sweet Martha.

It was already dark, and still we waited in vain.

At last some one rang. Our mother hurried to the door--a thing she never
did.

When we, too, ran into the hall, she had her arms around the child who
had incurred such danger, and we little ones kissed her also, and Martha
looked especially pretty in her happy astonishment at such a reception.

She, too, had been anxious enough while good Heinrich, General Maeyer's
servant, who had been his faithful comrade in arms from 1813 to 1815,
brought her home through all sorts of by-ways. But they had been obliged
in various places to pass near where the fighting was going on, and the
tender-hearted seventeen-year-old girl had seen such terrible things that
she burst into tears as she described them.

For us the worst anxiety was over, and our mother recovered her
composure. It was perhaps advisable for her, a defenceless widow, to
leave the city, which might on the morrow be given over to the unbridled
will of insurgents or of soldiers intoxicated with victory. So she
determined to make all preparations for going with us to our grandmother
in Dresden.

Meanwhile the fighting in the streets seemed to have increased in certain
places to a battle, for the crash of the artillery grapeshot was
constantly intermingled with the crackling of the infantry fire, and
through it all the bells were sounding the tocsin, a wailing, warning
sound, which stirred the inmost heart.

It was a fearful din, rattling and thundering and ringing, while the sky
emulated the bloodsoaked ea