tinct.

"It is the same noise that I heard just now," said the marshal, rising
in his turn.

"There are more than two hundred of them, M. Simon," said Olivier; "they
are armed with clubs and stones, and unfortunately the greater part of
our workmen are in Paris. We are not above forty here in all; the women
and children are already flying to their chambers, screaming for terror.
Do you not hear them?"

The ceiling shook beneath the tread of many hasty feet.

"Will this attack be a serious one?" said the marshal to his father, who
appeared more and more dejected.

"Very serious," said the old man; "there is nothing more fierce than
these combats between different unions; and everything has been done
lately to excite the people of the neighborhood against the factory."

"If you are so inferior in number," said the marshal, "you must begin by
barricading all the doors--and then--"

He was unable to conclude. A burst of ferocious cries shook the windows
of the room, and seemed so near and loud, that the marshal, his father,
and the young workman, rushed out into the little garden, which was
bounded on one side by a wall that separated it from the fields.
Suddenly whilst the shouts redoubled in violence, a shower of large
stones, intended to break the windows of the house, smashed some of the
panes on the first story, struck against the wall, and fell into the
garden, all around the marshal and his father. By a fatal chance, one
of these large stones struck the old man on the head. He staggered, bent
forward, and fell bleeding into the arms of Marshal Simon, just as arose
from without, with increased fury, the savage cries of, "Death to the
Devourers!"

CHAPTER IV. THE WOLVES AND THE DEVOURERS.

It was a frightful thing to view the approach of the lawless crowd,
whose first act of hostility had been so fatal to Marshal Simon's
father. One wing of the Common Dwelling-house, which joined the
garden-wall on that side, was next to the fields. It was there that the
Wolves began their attack. The precipitation of their march, the halt
they had made at two public-houses on the road, their ardent impatience
for the approaching struggle, had inflamed these men to a high pitch of
savage excitement. Having discharged their first shower of stones, most
of the assailants stooped down to look for more ammunition. Some of
them, to do so with greater ease, held their bludgeons between their
teeth; others had placed them aga