rs besieged the house on which the
jailer had appeared, and driving in the door, brought out his furniture
and piled it up against the prison gate to make a bonfire which should
burn it down. As soon as this device was understood, all those who had
labored hitherto cast down their tools and helped to swell the heap,
which reached half-way across the street, and was so high that those who
threw more fuel on the top got up by ladders. When all the keeper's
goods were flung upon this costly pile, to the last fragment, they
smeared it with the pitch and tar and rosin they had brought, and
sprinkled it with turpentine. To all the woodwork round the prison
doors they did the like, leaving not a joist or beam untouched. This
infernal christening performed, they fired the pile with lighted matches
and with blazing tow, and then stood by, awaiting the result.

The furniture being very dry and rendered more combustible by wax and
oil, besides the arts they had used, took fire at once. The flames
roared high and fiercely, blackening the prison wall, and twining up its
lofty front like burning serpents. At first they crowded round the
blaze, and vented their exultation only in their looks; but when it grew
hotter and fiercer--when it crackled, leaped, and roared, like a great
furnace--when it shone upon the opposite houses and lighted up not only
the pale and wondering faces at the windows, but the inmost corners of
each habitation--when, through the deep red heat and glow, the fire was
seen sporting and toying with the door, now clinging to its obdurate
surface, now gliding off with fierce inconstancy and soaring high into
the sky, anon returning to fold it in its burning grasp and lure it to
its ruin--when it shone and gleamed so brightly that the church clock of
St. Sepulchre's, so often pointing to the hour of death, was legible as
in broad day, and the vane upon its steeple-top glittered in the
unwonted light like something richly jeweled--when blackened stone and
sombre brick grew ruddy in the deep reflection, and windows shone like
burnished gold, dotting the longest distance in the fiery vista with
their specks of brightness--when wall and tower and roof and
chimney-stack seemed drunk, and in the flickering glare appeared to reel
and stagger--when scores of objects, never seen before, burst out upon
the view, and things the most familiar put on some new aspect--then the
mob began to join the whirl, and with loud yells, and s