Anne dared not leave her mother, who, strange to say, slept through the early alarms; and it was bowed on the edge of her mother's bed--that bed beside which she had tasted so much of happiness and so much of grief--that she passed, not knowing what the turning page might show, the first hour of anxiety and suspense.
The report of a shot shook her frame.

A scream stabbed her like a knife.
Lower and lower she thrust her face amid the bed-clothes, striving to shut out sound and knowledge; or, woman-like, she raised her pale, beseeching face that she might listen, that she might hope.

If he fell would they tell her?
And how he fell, and where?
Or would they hold her strange to him?
Would she never hear?
Suddenly her mother opened her eyes, lay a while listening, then slowly sat up and looked at her.

Anne saw the awakening alarm in the dear face, that in some mysterious way recalled its youth; and she fancied that to her other troubles, the misery of one of the old paroxysms was going to be added.

At such an hour, with such sounds of terror filling the night, with such a glare dancing on the ceiling the first attack had come on, years before.