A moment's pause ensued, and the door was again filled with new aspirants for "fame in the cannon's mouth," who, however, fared as badly as the preceding batch.

During this time the assailing party had been busy with crowbars and other instruments, in making several breaches in the yard walls.

At length they succeeded in opening entrances in three different places at the same time, and thus in a few minutes several hundred men were precipitated into the yard.

And now commenced the work of death in earnest.

The assailants were shot down in scores, while the upper windows of the house, from which the deadly firing was so ably kept up, received fifty discharges to the one that issued from them.