thinnest soup was turned to account; everything that could be
chewed for its juice was used to quiet the pains of fierce hunger; but
all was not enough. Men, women, and children died by thousands. Every
morning when the new guard went to take the place of the old one many of
the sentinels were found dead at their posts from starvation.

Still the heroic Guiton kept up the fight, and nobody dared say anything
to him about giving up. He still hoped for help from England, and meant
to hold out until it should come, cost what it might. In order that the
soldiers might have a little more to eat, and live and fight a little
longer, he turned all the old people and those who were too weak to
fight out of the town. The French would not let these poor wretches pass
their lines, but made an attack on them, and drove them back towards
Rochelle. But Guiton would not open the city gates to them. He said they
would starve to death if he let them into Rochelle, and they might as
well die outside as inside the gates.

At last news came that the English had made a treaty with the French,
and so there was no longer any hope of help for Rochelle, and truly the
place could hold out no longer. The famine was at its worst. Out of
about thirty thousand people only five thousand were left alive, and
they were starving; of six hundred Englishmen who had stayed to help the
Rochellese all were dead but sixty-two. Corpses lay thick in the
streets, for the people were too weak, from fasting, even to bury their
dead. The end had come. On the 30th of October, 1628, after nearly
fifteen months of heroic effort and frightful suffering, Rochelle
surrendered.

Richelieu at once sent food into the town, and treated the people very
kindly; but he took away all the old rights and privileges of the city.
He pulled down all the earth-works used by the defenders of the place,
and gave orders that nobody should build even a garden fence anywhere
near the town. He made a law that no Protestant who was not already a
citizen of Rochelle should go thither to live, and that the "city of
refuge" should never again receive any stranger without a permit from
the king.

THE SAD STORY OF A BOY KING.

London took a holiday on the 16th of July, 1377. There were processions
of merry-makers in the streets, and the windows were crowded with gayly
dressed men, women, and children. The great lords, glittering in armor,
and mounted upon splendid steel-clad horses, m