itched battle lasting three years than an ordinary siege. Gieselles, Van
Loon, Bievry, and now Berendrecht, had successively fallen at the post of
duty since the beginning of the year. Not one of them was more sincerely
deplored than Berendrecht. His place was supplied by Colonel Uytenhoove,
a stalwart, hirsute, hard-fighting Dutchman, the descendant of an ancient
race, and seasoned in many a hard campaign.

The enemy now being occupied in escarping and furnishing with batteries
the positions he had gained, with the obvious intention of attacking the
new counterscarp, it was resolved to prepare for the possible loss of
this line of fortifications by establishing another and still narrower
one within it.

Half the little place had been shorn away by the first change. Of the
half which was still in possession of the besieged about one-third was
now set off, and in this little corner of earth, close against the new
harbour, was set up their last refuge. They called the new citadel Little
Troy, and announced, with pardonable bombast, that they would hold out
there as long as the ancient Trojans had defended Ilium. With perfect
serenity the engineers set about their task with line, rule, and level,
measuring out the bulwarks and bastions, the miniature salients,
half-moons, and ditches, as neatly and methodically as if there were no
ceaseless cannonade in their ears, and as if the workmen were not at
every moment summoned to repel assaults upon the outward wall. They. sent
careful drawings of Little Troy to Maurice and the States, and received
every encouragement to persevere, together with promises of ultimate
relief.

But there was one serious impediment to the contemplated construction of
the new earth-works. They had no earth. Nearly everything solid had been
already scooped away in the perpetual delving. The sea-dykes had been
robbed of their material, so that the coming winter might find besiegers
and besieged all washed together into the German Ocean, and it was hard
digging and grubbing among the scanty cellarages of the dilapidated
houses. But there were plenty of graves, filled with the results of three
years' hard fighting. And now, not only were all the cemeteries within
the precincts shovelled and carted in mass to the inner fortifications,
but rewards being offered of ten stivers for each dead body, great heaps
of disinterred soldiers were piled into the new ramparts. Thus these
warriors, after laying down th