was a long one, and
when it ceased the night was yet full of the swaying and murmuring of a
crowd.

"What next?" was the question of the listeners. Nothing came yet. The
mill remained mute as a mausoleum.

"He _cannot_ be alone!" whispered Caroline.

"I would stake all I have that he is as little alone as he is alarmed,"
responded Shirley.

Shots were discharged by the rioters. Had the defenders waited for this
signal? It seemed so. The hitherto inert and passive mill woke; fire
flashed from its empty window-frames; a volley of musketry pealed sharp
through the Hollow.

"Moore speaks at last!" said Shirley, "and he seems to have the gift of
tongues. That was not a single voice."

"He has been forbearing. No one can accuse him of rashness," alleged
Caroline. "Their discharge preceded his. They broke his gates and his
windows. They fired at his garrison before he repelled them."

What was going on now? It seemed difficult, in the darkness, to
distinguish; but something terrible, a still-renewing tumult, was
obvious--fierce attacks, desperate repulses. The mill-yard, the mill
itself, was full of battle movement. There was scarcely any cessation
now of the discharge of firearms; and there was struggling, rushing,
trampling, and shouting between. The aim of the assailants seemed to be
to enter the mill, that of the defenders to beat them off. They heard
the rebel leader cry, "To the back, lads!" They heard a voice retort,
"Come round; we will meet you."

"To the counting-house!" was the order again.

"Welcome! we shall have you there!" was the response. And accordingly
the fiercest blaze that had yet glowed, the loudest rattle that had yet
been heard, burst from the counting-house front when the mass of rioters
rushed up to it.

The voice that had spoken was Moore's own voice. They could tell by its
tones that his soul was now warm with the conflict; they could guess
that the fighting animal was roused in every one of those men there
struggling together, and was for the time quite paramount above the
rational human being.

Both the girls felt their faces glow and their pulses throb; both knew
they would do no good by rushing down into the _melee_. They desired
neither to deal nor to receive blows; but they could not have run
away--Caroline no more than Shirley; they could not have fainted; they
could not have taken their eyes from the dim, terrible scene--from the
mass of cloud, of smoke, the musket-lightning-