in the dark further end.

Near the closet door was a bucket of water, and Jackson says that
Sergeant Porteous walked toward it to get a drink. At the next moment a
shot rang out and the brave officer fell dead. Lally was shot directly
afterward. Exactly how and where will never be known, but the
probabilities are that the black fiend sent a bullet into him before he
recovered from his surprise at the sudden onslaught. Then the murderer
dashed out of the back door and disappeared.

The neighborhood was already agog with the tragic events of the two
preceding days, and the sound of the shots was a signal for wild and
instant excitement. In a few moments a crowd had gathered and people
were pouring in by the hundred from every point of the compass. Jackson
and his wife had fled and at first nobody knew what had happened, but
the surmise that Charles had recommenced his bloody work was on every
tongue and soon some of the bolder found their way to the house in the
rear. There the bleeding forms of the two policemen told the story.

Lally was still breathing, and a priest was sent for to administer the
last rites. Father Fitzgerald responded, and while he was bending over
the dying man the outside throng was rushing wildly through the
surrounding yards and passageways searching for the murderer. "Where is
he?" "What has become of him?" were the questions on every lip.

Suddenly the answer came in a shot from the room directly overhead. It
was fired through a window facing Saratoga Street, and the bullet struck
down a young man named Alfred J. Bloomfield, who was standing in the
narrow passage-way between the two houses. He fell on his knees and a
second bullet stretched him dead.

When he fled from the closet Charles took refuge in the upper story of
the house. There are four windows on that floor, two facing toward
Saratoga Street and two toward Rampart. The murderer kicked several
breaches in the frail central partition, so he could rush from side to
side, and like a trapped beast, prepared to make his last stand.

Nobody had dreamed that he was still in the house, and when Bloomfield
was shot there was a headlong stampede. It was some minutes before the
exact situation was understood. Then rifles and pistols began to speak,
and a hail of bullets poured against the blind frontage of the old
house. Every one hunted some coign of vantage, and many cli