ch dreadful shrieks for
help, that the whole jail resounded with the noise; which was loudly
heard even above the shouting of the mob and roaring of the flames, and
was so full of agony and despair that it made the boldest tremble....

The women who were looking on shrieked loudly, beat their hands
together, stopped their ears, and many fainted; the men who were not
near the walls and active in the siege, rather than do nothing tore up
the pavement of the street, and did so with a haste and fury they could
not have surpassed if that had been the jail, and they were near their
object. Not one living creature in the throng was for an instant still.
The whole great mass were mad.

A shout! Another! Another yet, though few knew why, or what it meant.
But those around the gate had seen it slowly yield, and drop from its
topmost hinge. It hung on that side by but one, but it was upright still
because of the bar, and its having sunk of its own weight into the heap
of ashes at its foot. There was now a gap at the top of the doorway,
through which could be descried a gloomy passage, cavernous and dark.
Pile up the fire!

It burned fiercely. The door was red-hot, and the gap wider. They vainly
tried to shield their faces with their hands, and standing as if in
readiness for a spring, watched the place. Dark figures, some crawling
on their hands and knees, some carried in the arms of others, were seen
to pass along the roof. It was plain the jail could hold out no longer.
The keeper and his officers, and their wives and children, were
escaping. Pile up the fire!

The door sank down again: it settled deeper in the
cinders--tottered--yielded--was down!

As they shouted again, they fell back for a moment, and left a clear
space about the fire that lay between them and the jail entry. Hugh
leaped upon the blazing heap, and scattering a train of sparks into the
air, and making the dark lobby glitter with those that hung upon his
dress, dashed into the jail.

The hangman followed. And then so many rushed upon their track that the
fire got trodden down and thinly strewn about the street; but there was
no need of it now, for inside and out, the prison was in flames.

* * * * *

During the whole course of the terrible scene which was now at its
height, one man in the jail suffered a degree of fear and mental torment
which had no parallel in the endurance even of those who lay under
sentence of death