child.

Corpse after corpse sank on the stone wall beside the fallen man, but
the iron wedge of the Spaniards pressed farther and farther forward.

"Espana, a sangre, a carne!"

Now they had reached the Walloons, steel clashed against steel, but only
for a moment, then the defenders of the city wavered, the furious wedge
entered their ranks, they parted, yielded, and with loud shrieks took
to flight. The Spanish swords raged among them, and overpowered by the
general terror, the officers followed the example of the soldiers, the
flying army, like a resistless torrent, carrying everything with it,
even the smith.

An unparalleled massacre began. Adam seeing a frantic horde rush into
the houses, remembered Ruth, and half mad with terror hastened back to
the smithy, where he told those left behind what he had witnessed. Then,
arming himself and his journeymen with weapons forged by his own hand,
he hurried out with them to renew the fight.

Hours elapsed; the noise, the firing, the ringing of the alarm bells
still continued; smoke and the smell of fire penetrated through the
doors and windows.

Evening came, and the richest, most flourishing commercial capital in
the world was here a heap of ashes, there a ruin, everywhere a plundered
treasury.

Once the occupants of the smith's shop heard a band of murderers raging
and shouting outside of the smithy; but they passed by, and all day long
no others entered the quiet street, which was inhabited only by workers
in metal.

Ruth and old Rahel had remained behind, under the protection of the
brave foreman. Adam had told them to fly to the cellar, if any uproar
arose outside the door. Ruth wore a dagger, determined in the worst
extremity to turn it against her own breast. What did she care for life,
since Ulrich had perished!

Old Rahel, an aged dame of eighty, paced restlessly, with bowed figure,
through the large room, saying compassionately, whenever her eyes
met the girl's: "Ulrich, our Ulrich!" then, straightening herself and
looking upward. She no longer knew what had happened a few hours before,
yet her memory faithfully retained the incidents that occurred many
years previous. The maidservant, a native of Antwerp, had rushed home to
her parents when the tumult began.

As the day drew towards a close, the panes were less frequently shaken
by the thunder of the artillery, the noise in the streets diminished,
but the house became more and more filled with suffoc