While she worked her ears listened for the alarm, but, until she had finished and was ascending with the light to her mother's room she heard nothing.

Then a distant cry, a faint challenge, the drum-drum of running feet, a second cry--and silence.

It might be his death-cry she had heard; and she stood with a white face, shivering, waiting, bearing the woman's burden of suspense.

To lie down by her mother was impossible; rapine, murder, fire, all the horrors, all the perils of a city taken by surprise, crowded into her mind.

Yet they moved her not so much as the dangers he ran, whom she had sent forth to confront them, whom she had plucked from her own breast that he might face them! Meanwhile, Claude, after gaining the tiles, paused a moment to consider his next step.