oft chair and looking out at the passers on the street,
among whom he had begun to notice some singular evidences of excitement,
there came from a slender Gothic church-spire that was highest of all in
the city, just beyond a few roofs in front of him, the clear, sudden,
brazen peal of its one great bell.

"Fire," thought Richling; and yet, he knew not why, wondered where Dr.
Sevier might be. He had not seen him that morning. A high official had
sent for him at sunrise and he had not returned.

"Clang," went the bell again, and the softer ding--dang--dong of others,
struck at the same instant, came floating in from various distances.
And then it clanged again--and again--and again--the loud one near,
the soft ones, one by one, after it--six, seven, eight, nine--ah!
stop there! stop there! But still the alarm pealed on; ten--alas!
alas!--eleven--oh, oh, the women and children!--twelve! And then the
fainter, final asseverations of the more distant bells--twelve! twelve!
twelve!--and a hundred and seventy thousand souls knew by that sign that
the foe had passed the forts. New Orleans had fallen.

Richling dressed himself hurriedly and went out. Everywhere drums were
beating to arms. Couriers and aides-de-camp were galloping here and
there. Men in uniform were hurrying on foot to this and that rendezvous.
Crowds of the idle and poor were streaming out toward the levee.
Carriages and cabs rattled frantically from place to place; men ran
out-of-doors and leaped into them and leaped out of them and sprang up
stair-ways; hundreds of all manner of vehicles, fit and unfit to carry
passengers and goods, crowded toward the railroad depots and steam-boat
landings; women ran into the streets wringing their hands and holding
their brows; and children stood in the door-ways and gate-ways and
trembled and called and cried.

Richling took the new Dauphine street-car. Far down in the Third
district, where there was a silence like that of a village lane, he
approached a little cottage painted with Venetian red, setting in its
garden of oranges, pomegranates, and bananas, and marigolds, and
coxcombs behind its white paling fence and green gate.

The gate was open. In it stood a tall, strong woman, good-looking, rosy,
and neatly dressed. That she was tall you could prove by the gate, and
that she was strong, by the graceful muscularity with which she held
two infants,--pretty, swarthy little fellows, with joyous black eyes,
and evidentl