As I look upon it now it seems to me like one of those bright, wide rays of glorious light which we have sometimes seen bursting through a rift in the clouds, from the setting sun, and illuminating, for a brief space of time, the black, perturbed and convulsed sky. One of our poets has compared it to-- "A dead soldier's sword athwart his pall." But it faded away, and the storm came down, at last, heavy and dark and deadly. CHAPTER XXX. UPON THE HOUSE-TOP A few days after our joint wedding Max came running in one day, and said: "It is to be to-morrow." He gave each of us a red cross to sew upon our clothes. He was very much excited, and hurried out again. I had said to him, the morning of our marriage, that I desired to return home before the outbreak came, for I was now responsible for Estella's life and safety; and I feared that all communication of one part of the world with another would be cut off by the threatened revolution. He had begged me to remain. He said that at the interview with General Quincy it had been made a condition of the contract that each of the executive committee--Cæsar, the vice-president and himself--should have one of the flying air-ships placed at his disposal, after the outbreak, well manned and equipped with bombs and arms of all kinds. These "Demons" were to be subject to their order at any time, and to be guarded by the troops at their magazine in one of the suburbs until called for. The committee had several reasons for making this arrangement: the outbreak might fail and they would have to fly; or the outbreak might succeed, but become ungovernable, and they would have to escape from the tempest they had themselves invoked. Max had always had a dream that after the Plutocracy was overthrown the insurgents would reconstruct a purer and better state of society; but of late my conversations with him, and his own observations, had begun to shake his faith in this particular.