across
the street to the dead-wall opposite, and in the raging torrent were
seen the woman's skirt, the jacket of a man, the white hairs of the
grandfather; then came the crash of a volley of musketry, and the wall
was splashed with blood from base to coping. This was a point on which
the Germans were inexorable; everyone caught with arms in his hands
and not belonging to some uniformed organization was shot without the
formality of a trial, as having violated the law of nations. They were
enraged at the obstinate resistance offered them by the village, and
the frightful loss they had sustained during the five hours' conflict
provoked them to the most atrocious reprisals. The gutters ran red with
blood, the piled dead in the streets formed barricades, some of the more
open places were charnel-houses, from whose depths rose the death-rattle
of men in their last agony. And in every house that they had to carry by
assault in this way men were seen distributing wisps of lighted straw,
others ran to and fro with blazing torches, others smeared the walls and
furniture with petroleum; soon whole streets were burning, Bazeilles was
in flames.

And now Weiss's was the only house in the central portion of the village
that still continued to hold out, preserving its air of menace, like
some stern citadel determined not to yield.

"Look out! here they come!" shouted the lieutenant.

A simultaneous discharge from the attic and the first floor laid low
three of the Bavarians, who had come forward hugging the walls. The
remainder of the body fell back and posted themselves under cover
wherever the street offered facilities, and the siege of the house
began; the bullets pelted on the front like rattling hail. For nearly
ten minutes the fusillade continued without cessation, damaging the
stucco, but not doing much mischief otherwise, until one of the men whom
the lieutenant had taken with him to the garret was so imprudent as
to show himself at a window, when a bullet struck him square in the
forehead, killing him instantly. It was plain that whoever exposed
himself would do so at peril of his life.

"Doggone it! there's one gone!" growled the lieutenant. "Be careful,
will you; there's not enough of us that we can afford to let ourselves
be killed for the fun of it!"

He had taken a musket and was firing away like the rest of them from
behind the protection of a shutter, at the same time watching and
encouraging his men. It was L