d wars, fought long ago, and here was a real war right on
hand, that seemed to be wandering all around the house.

During all the long, hot days of the armistice, a kind of dull quiet had
appeared to brood over the city and its forts and over the camps and
entrenchments of the besiegers. It had been something like a
thundercloud, which was all the while growing blacker and hanging
lower, and before the end of the first day of renewed hostilities the
anxious watchers in the city houses could hear something which sounded
like distant thunder. It was the occasional roar of a gun from one or
another of the batteries on either side, as a warning of the more
terrible things which were about to come, and more than once Ned groaned
to himself:

"Oh, how I wish I were out there, with Lieutenant Grant and the Seventh.
This is worse than being shut up in Vera Cruz. I didn't have any
regiment of my own, then, but now I belong in General Scott's army."

Evening came at last, and all of the family was gathered behind the
lattices of the parlor windows, to watch the detachments of soldiers
march past, and to wonder where they were going. General Zuroaga was not
there, but there had been a message from him that there would be a great
battle in the morning, for the Americans were moving forward.

"We are in greater numbers than they are," muttered General Tassara.
"But we have no General Scott, and we have no officers like his. Almost
all that we really have is courage and gunpowder, and these are not
enough to defeat such an attack as he will make. The city is lost
already!"

CHAPTER XIX.

THE STARS AND STRIPES IN TENOCHTITLAN

"What a roar it is! And so very near! I hope General Scott will not
bombard this city, as he did Vera Cruz. It would be awful to see
bombshells falling among these crowds of people!"

The American commander had not the slightest idea of doing anything of
the kind, but there had been almost continuous fighting in the days
following the termination of the armistice. Perhaps the hardest of it
had been at Molino del Rey, and the defences there had been carried by
the assailants. There appeared now to be but the one barrier of the
Chapultepec hill between them and a final victory.

A hand was on Ned's shoulder, and a trembling voice said to him:

"Oh, Senor Carfora! Where have you been? I'm so frightened! Are those
cannon coming right on into the city?"

"No," said Ned, "but I have been out all d