The fire had at last flickered out and the revels seemed on the wane.

Suddenly a body of men appeared in close order, marching down the street toward the bank.

We stood perhaps a hundred yards from that building, which was, in its turn, about two hundred from the Piazza.

Steadily they came along; no sound reached us from the wood.
"This is getting interesting," I said.

"There'll be trouble soon." As near as I could see, the colonel's band, for such it was, no doubt, did not number more than five-and-twenty at the outside.