Chapter 15 - Page 2

malignity. We
have not 'laid up treasure where moth and rust can corrupt, or where
thieves may break in and steal,' It may be that the morning shall bring
means of parley, and haply, opportunity of ransom."

There was the glimmering of hope in this suggestion. The idea seemed to
give a new direction to the thoughts of Ruth, and the change enabled the
long habits of self-restraint to regain something of their former
ascendancy. The fountains of her tears became dry, and, after one short
and terrible struggle, she was again enabled to appear composed. But at
no time during the continuance of that fearful struggle, was Ruth
Heathcote again the same ready and useful agent of activity and order that
she had been in the earlier events of the night.

It is scarcely necessary to remind the reader that the brief burst of
parental agony which has just been related, escaped Content and his wife
amid a scene in which the other actors were too much occupied by their
exertions to note its exhibition. The fate of those in the block was too
evidently approaching its close, to allow of any interest in such an
episode to the great tragedy of the moment.

The character of the contest had in some measure changed. There was no
longer any immediate apprehension from the missiles of the assailants,
though danger pressed upon the besieged in a new and even in a more
horrible aspect. Now and then indeed an arrow quivered in the openings of
the loops, and the blunt Dudley had once a narrow escape from the passage
of a bullet, which, guided by chance, or aimed by a hand surer than
common, glanced through one of the narrow slits, and would have terminated
the history of the borderer, had not the head it obliquely encountered,
been too solid to yield even to such an assault. The attention of the
garrison was chiefly called to the imminent danger of the surrounding
fire. Though the probability of such an emergency as that in which the
family was now placed, had certainly been foreseen, and in some degree
guarded against, in the size of the area and in the construction of the
block, yet it was found that the danger exceeded all former calculations.

For the basement, there was no reason to feel alarm. It was of stone, and
of a thickness and a material to put at defiance any artifices that their
enemy might find time to practise. Even the two upper stories were
comparatively safe; for they were composed of blocks so solid as to
require time to heat them, and they were consequently as little liable to
combustion as wood well could be. But the roof, like all of that, and
indeed, like most of the present day in America, was composed of short
inflammable shingles of pine. The superior height of the tower was some
little