the Fives' Court, and their universal consternation and despair
when he quitted it, was terrible. The crowd that had a few minutes
before so smilingly and hopefully entered their homes, now fled from
them in terror. Again the streets were thronged by the unhappy people,
who began to believe themselves the sport of some powerful and
malevolent demon. Whole families, parents, children, and servants,
rushed together into the streets, making their way to the south to
escape the missiles that pursued them. Some bore pieces of furniture
snatched up in haste, and apparently seized because they came first to
hand; some took the chairs they had been sitting on; one man my
grandfather noticed bearing away with difficulty the leaf of a mahogany
table, leaving behind the legs which should have supported it; and a
woman had a crying child in one hand, and in the other a gridiron, still
reeking with the fat of some meat she had been cooking. Rubbish from the
houses began to strew the streets; and here and there a ragged breach in
a wall rent by the cannon afforded a strange incongruous glimpse of the
room inside, with its mirrors, tables, and drapery, just as the
inhabitants left them. Armed soldiers were hastening to their different
points of assembly, summoned by bugles that resounded shrilly amid the
din, and thrusting their way unceremoniously through the impeding masses
of fugitives.

The house of the Jew Lazaro was one of the first that was seriously
injured. The blank wall of the great warehouse before mentioned, that
faced the street, had, either from age or bad masonry, long before
exhibited several cracks. A large segment, bounded by two of these
cracks, had been knocked away by a shot, and the superincumbent mass
falling in consequence, the great store, and all its hoarded treasures,
appeared through the chasm.

The Jew's instincts had, at first, led him to save himself by flight.
But, on returning timorously to look after his property, the sight of
the ruined wall, and the unprotected hoards on which he had so securely
reckoned as the source of wealth, obliterated in his mind, for the time,
all sense of personal danger. Seeing a party of soldiers issuing from a
wine-house near, he eagerly besought them to assist him in removing his
property to a place of safety, promising to reward them largely for
their risk and trouble.

One of the soldiers thus appealed to was Mr Bags.

"Ho, ho!" said Mr Bags; "here's a chance--her