miscellaneous
goods--pictures, feather-beds, old armour, plate, mirrors, harness,
carpets, and wearing apparel. All were tossed together in wild
confusion. The moon was hidden; air, earth, and water were lurid; a
hot blast blew in men's faces, which alone remained white and haggard,
when a murmur and question, a doubt and frenzy, first stirred and fast
convulsed the mass. "Where is Miss Alice?" Ay, where was Miss Alice?
Who had seen her? Speak, in God's name!--shout her name until her
voice replies, and men's shuddering souls are freed from this ghastly
nightmare.

Miss Alice! Alice Boswell! are you safe, lamenting unseen the home of
your fathers? Or are you within that turret whose foundation rock
descends sheer into the sea--that turret close by which the demon began
his work, where his forked tongue is now licking each loophole and
outlet, where beams are bursting and the yawning jaws of hell are about
to swallow up the rapid wreck--forgotten, forsaken--the queen of hearts,
the wooed and worshipped beauty; fair and sweet, ripe and rare, the sole
daughter of the race; the charm and delight of its grey heads?

Oh, Father, thou art terrible in thy decrees! Oh, men, ye are miserable
fools! She is there by the blazing framework of the window of her
chamber, which she has never quitted; her hair loose, some portion of
her dress cast about her, her eyes wide open and glazing with terror,
but strangely beautiful--with a glory behind and about her; an unearthly
brightness upon brow and cheek, and white arms stretched out
imploringly, despairingly for help in her utmost need.

They pressed forward; they looked up in anguish; old men who had
followed her when a fairy child, friends of long standing, acquaintances
of yesterday. Again and again the gallant soldier penetrated the low
doorway; again and again he swerved and recoiled from the furnace fumes
that met him--a more fearful encounter than the fury of the
sans-culottes and the reeking pools beneath the guillotine.

"_Courage, soldats! Vive la mort, pour la femme et pour la gloire!_" and
with a shout half-exulting, half-maddened, the Gallic blood again fired
to the desperate feat. Then there was a diversion--a rush to the
opposite side of the building--a ladder might be of use there. A notion
of forcing open a closed-up and disused gallery of communication, seized
hold of these agitated minds, and this afforded a vent to the pent-up
sympathy and distress. New energy su