that the whole country
appeared to be up in arms from Portsmouth to Dover. Corps of
observation and a fleet of thirty aerostats had been sent out, and
three army corps were already on the march to the south and east.

Meanwhile, the hour for the surrender of London was drawing very
near, and all the while the bells were sending their mingled melody
of peals and carillons up into the clear frosty air with a defiant
joyousness that seemed to speak of anything but surrender. As twelve
o'clock approached the guns of all the batteries on the heights were
loaded and trained on different parts of the city, and the whole of
the forces left after the detachment of the armies that had been sent
to engage the battalions of the Federation prepared to descend upon
the devoted city from all sides after the two hours' incessant
bombardment that had been ordered to precede the general attack.

It had been arranged that if the city surrendered a white flag was to
be hoisted on the cross of St. Paul's.

Within a few minutes of twelve the Tsar ascended to the roof of the
Alexandra Palace on Muswell Hill, and turned his field-glasses on the
towering dome. His face and lips were bloodless with repressed but
intense anxiety, but the hands that held his glasses to his eyes were
as steady as though he had been watching a review of his own troops.
It was the supreme moment of his victorious career. He was
practically master of Europe. Only Britain held out. The relieving
forces would be rent to fragments by his war-balloons, and then
decimated by his troops as the legions of Germany and Austria had
been. The capital of the English-speaking world lay starving at his
feet, and a few minutes would see--

Ha! there goes the flag at last. A little ball of white bunting
creeps up from the gallery above the dark dome. It clears the railing
under the pedestal, and climbs to the apex of the shining cross. As
it does so the wild chorus of the bells suddenly ceases, and out of
the silence that follows come the deep booming strokes of the great
bell of St. Paul's sounding the hour of twelve.

As the last stroke dies away the ball bursts, and the White Ensign of
Britain crossed by the Red Cross of St. George, and with the Jack in
the corner, floats out defiantly on the breeze, greeted by the
reawakening clamour of the bells, and a deep hoarse cry from millions
of throats, that rolls like a vast sea of sound up the slopes to the
encampments of the Lea