of the passage pointing his gun
at them, one of the others was rifling their room, others had kicked
down the girls' door and one was at the end by Octavia's. None of the
other people, miners of sorts, except one man's wife, had come in yet,
as it was not more than half past ten o'clock! She was soon pulled out,
too, and one brute seized me and roughly threw my hands up while he held
a gun to my head. I did feel very frightened, Mamma, but it was all
so terribly exciting, it was quite worth while. I wish I had had a
revolver. I would have used it in a minute. As it was I just watched
from under the brute's arm. Every door was broken down then, and as
noiselessly as they could they ransacked each room. If we had attempted
to scream they would have shot us dead. The girls were speechless with
terror, only Octavia looked a contemptuous tragedy queen in her white
nighty, and the miner's wife had a face of petrified rage; she wasn't
a bit frightened, either. Then up the stairs ran the secretary and the
proprietor's wife, a kind amusing old woman. She had evidently seen this
sort of hold up before (it is called a "hold up," Mamma), for she called
out: "Don't be afraid, ladies, dears, they won't hurt you if you don't
yell"; and then she bolted down the stairs again like a rabbit to get
help, while my brute turned his attention from me for a minute to fire
after her. She had got past the turn of the stairs, but he caught the
secretary in the ankle, and he fell with a groan on the floor.

It was an unpleasant situation, wasn't it, Mamma, six women in
nightgowns with their hands above their heads, Randolph an object of
misery with his pink silk pyjamas torn, and the secretary lying in a
pool of blood, unconscious, by the stairs, while two wretches covered
the whole party with their revolvers!

It seemed an eternity before the men had finished ransacking the rooms,
swearing terribly at finding so little there; and then they came out and
made for the door at the end, which had an outside staircase leading
on to the mountain. At last a noise of voices like distant thunder was
heard getting nearer and nearer, and before they could kick that door
down and escape, Nelson and Tom dashed up the stairs, their revolvers in
their hands; and the last coherent thing I remember was seeing Nelson
take instant aim and shoot the man who was holding the gun to my head as
he had his finger on the trigger to shoot me; and if Nelson had given
him a