"The war is promising a great deal," replied Tassara, gloomily. "It has already delivered us from King Paredes and Santa Anna and from half a dozen other military usurpers. Moreover, all the lands which the United States propose to take away will be rescued from any future anarchy and will be made some use of. They will be lost to Mexico forever within one week from to-day, for we cannot hold the city." General Zuroaga had quietly disappeared. Very soon, the Tassara family went to their own room. Then not even the servants could tell what had become of Senora Paez. Ned Crawford did not at all know what to do with himself. He walked around the rooms below; then he went out to the stables and back again, but he was all alone, for Pablo and the Oaxaca men had gone to their regiment. He went up to the library and had a one-sided talk with the man in armor, but it did not do him any good, and he did not care a cent for all the books on the shelves. They could tell only of old wars, fought long ago, and here was a real war right on hand, that seemed to be wandering all around the house. During all the long, hot days of the armistice, a kind of dull quiet had appeared to brood over the city and its forts and over the camps and entrenchments of the besiegers. It had been something like a thundercloud, which was all the while growing blacker and hanging lower, and before the end of the first day of renewed hostilities the anxious watchers in the city houses could hear something which sounded like distant thunder. It was the occasional roar of a gun from one or another of the batteries on either side, as a warning of the more terrible things which were about to come, and more than once Ned groaned to himself: "Oh, how I wish I were out there, with Lieutenant Grant and the Seventh. This is worse than being shut up in Vera Cruz. I didn't have any regiment of my own, then, but now I belong in General Scott's army." Evening came at last, and all of the family was gathered behind the lattices of the parlor windows, to watch the detachments of soldiers march past, and to wonder where they were going. General Zuroaga was not there, but there had been a message from him that there would be a great battle in the morning, for the Americans were moving forward. "We are in greater numbers than they are," muttered General Tassara. "But we have no General Scott, and we have no officers like his. Almost all that we really have is courage and gunpowder, and these are not enough to defeat such an attack as he will make. The city is lost already!" CHAPTER XIX. THE STARS AND STRIPES IN TENOCHTITLAN "What a roar it is! And so very near! I hope General Scott will not bombard this city, as he did Vera Cruz. It would be awful to see bombshells falling among these crowds of people!"