, she made out that the tide of conflict was
running inward into the town, a sign that the invaders were gaining the
mastery.

"Well?" Madame Royaume asked, her voice querulous.

Anne strove to say something that would soothe her mother. But a sob
choked her, and when she regained her speech she felt herself impelled,
she knew not why, to tell the truth. "I fear our people are falling
back," she murmured, trembling so violently that she could barely stand.

"How far? Where are they, child?" Her mother's voice was eager. "Where
are they?"

"They are almost under the window!" And then withdrawing her head with a
shudder, while she clung for support to the frame of the window: "They
are fighting underneath me now," she said. "God pity them!"

"And who is--are we still getting the worst of it?"

Forced by a kind of fascination, Anne looked out again. "Yes, there is
one man, a big man, leads them on," she said, in the voice of one who,
painfully absorbed in a sight, reports it involuntarily. "He is driving
our people before him. Ah! he has struck one down this moment. He is
almost underneath us now. But his people will not follow him! They are
standing. He--he waves them on!"

"He is beneath us?" Madame's voice sounded strangely near, strangely
insistent. But Anne, wrapt in what she saw, did not heed it.

"Yes! He is a dozen paces in front of his men. He is underneath us now.
He urges them to follow him! He towers above them! He is----"

She broke off; close to her sounded a heavy breathing, that even above
the babel of the street caught her ear. She drew in her head, looked,
and, overwrought by that which she had been witnessing, she shrieked
aloud.

Beside her, bending under the weight of the great steaming pot, stood
her mother! Her mother, who had scarcely left her bedroom twice in a
twelvemonth, nor crossed it as many times in a week. But it was her
mother; endowed at this pass, and for the instant, with supernatural
strength. For even as Anne recoiled thunderstruck, the old woman lifted
the huge _marmite_, half-full and steaming as it was, to the ledge of
the window, steadied it there an instant, and then, with the gleaming
eyes and set pale face of an avenging prophetess, thrust it forth.

A second they gazed at one another with suspended breath. Then from the
street below rose a wild shriek, a crash, and lo, the huge pot lay
shattered in the kennel beside the man whom, Heaven directed, it had
slain. As i