re crouching together in that horrible vault, expecting their death
moment by moment. But that's why it was, and not from any want of
retiring modesty. I believe that those poor souls wished to shew those
they loved how true was that feeling; and therefore it was that wife
crept to husband's side and Lizzy Green, forgetting all else now, placed
her arms round my neck, and her lips to mine, and kissed me again and
again.

It was no time for scruples; and thus it was that, being close to them,
I heard Miss Ross, kneeling by the side of Captain Dyer, ask him,
sobbing bitterly the while--ask him to forgive her, while he looked
almost cold and strange at her, till she whispered to him long and
earnestly, when I knew that she must be telling him all about the events
of that morning. It must have been, for with a cry of joy I saw him
bend towards her, when she threw her arms round him, and clasped his
poor bleeding form to her breast.

They were so when I last looked upon them, and every one seemed lost in
his or her own suffering, all save those two children, one of whom was
asleep on Mrs Maine's lap, and the other playing with the gold knot of
Captain Dyer's sword.

Then came a time of misty smoke and heat, and the crackling of woodwork;
but all the while there was a stream of hot pure air rushing in at that
grating to give us life.

We could hear the black fiends running round and round the burning
building, yelling, and no doubt ready to thrust back any one who tried
to get out. But there seemed then to come another misty time, from
which I was roused by Lizzy whispering to me: "Is it very near now?"

"What?" I said faintly.

"Death," she whispered, with her lips close to my ear. "If it is, pray
God that he will never let us part again in the land where all is
peace?"

I tried to answer her, but I could not, for the hot, stifling blinding
smoke was now in my throat, when the yelling outside seemed to increase.
There was a loud rushing sound; the trampling of horses; the jingling
of cavalry sabres; a loud English hurray; and a crash; and I knew that
there was a charge of horse sweeping by. Then came the hurried beating
of feet, the ring of platoon after platoon of musketry, a rapid,
squandering, skirmishing fire; more yelling, and more English cheers;
the rush, again, of galloping horses; and, by slow degrees, the sound of
a fierce skirmish, growing more and more distant till there came another
rapid beating