of disquiet that roused them
at midnight grow to sharp alarms, and these again--to the dull, pulsing
music of the tocsin--swell to the uproar of a deadly conflict waged by
desperate men in narrow streets. She was but one of thousands who that
night heard fate knocking at their hearts; who praying, sick with fear,
for the return of their men, showed white faces at barred windows, and
by every tossing light that passed along the lane viewed long years of
loneliness or widowhood.

But Anne had this burden also; that she had of herself sent her man into
danger; her man, who, but for her pleading, but for her bidding, might
not have gone. And that thought, though she had done her duty, laid a
cold grip upon her heart. Her work it was if he lay at this moment stark
in some dark alley, the first victim of the assault; or, sorely wounded,
cried for water; or waited in pain where none but the stricken heard
him. The thought bowed her to the ground, sent her to her prayers, took
from her alike all memory of the danger that had menaced her this
morning, and all consciousness of that which now threatened her, a
helpless woman, if the town were taken.

The house, having its back on the Rue de la Cite, at the point where
that street joined the Tertasse, stood in the heart of the conflict; and
almost from the moment of the first attack on the Porte Neuve, which
Claude was in time to witness, was a centre of fierce and deadly
fighting. Anne dared not leave her mother, who, strange to say, slept
through the early alarms; and it was bowed on the edge of her mother's
bed--that bed beside which she had tasted so much of happiness and so
much of grief--that she passed, not knowing what the turning page might
show, the first hour of anxiety and suspense.

The report of a shot shook her frame. A scream stabbed her like a knife.
Lower and lower she thrust her face amid the bed-clothes, striving to
shut out sound and knowledge; or, woman-like, she raised her pale,
beseeching face that she might listen, that she might hope. If he fell
would they tell her? And how he fell, and where? Or would they hold her
strange to him? Would she never hear?

Suddenly her mother opened her eyes, lay a while listening, then slowly
sat up and looked at her. Anne saw the awakening alarm in the dear face,
that in some mysterious way recalled its youth; and she fancied that to
her other troubles, the misery of one of the old paroxysms was going to
be added. At