“A little lighter charge of powder, my dear,” said the Marquise, giving the smoking weapon to her daughter to be reloaded, while she poised its fellow carefully in her hand. “I sighted him _very_ fine, and was a trifle over my mark even then. These pistols always throw high at so short a distance.” Then she placed herself in readiness for another enemy, and during a short space waited in vain. The report of her pistol had been followed by a general scramble of the negroes, who tumbled precipitately downstairs, and in some cases even out of the house, under the impression that every succeeding moment might find them all blown into the air. But the very cause of the besiegers’ panic proved, when their alarm subsided, of the utmost detriment to the garrison. Hippolyte, finding himself still in possession of his limbs and faculties, on the same side of the Sulphur Mountain as before, argued, reasonably enough, that the concealed powder was a delusion, and with considerable promptitude at once set fire to the lower part of the house; after which, once more mustering his followers, and encouraging them by his example, he ascended the staircase, and betaking himself to the crowbar with a will, soon battered in the weak defence that alone stood between the ladies and their savage enemies. Cerise had loaded her mother’s pistol to perfection; that mother, roused out of all thought of self by her child’s danger, was even now reckoning the last frail chance by which her daughter might escape. During the short respite afforded by the panic of the negroes, they had dragged with desperate strength a heavy chest of drawers, and placed it across the doorway. Even when the latter was forced, this slight breast-work afforded an additional impediment to the assailants. “You must drop from the window, my child,” whispered the Marquise, when the shattered door fell in at length across this last obstruction, revealing a hideous confusion of black forms, and rolling eyes, and grinning fiendish faces. “It is not a dozen feet, but mind you turn round so as to light on your hands and knees. Célandine _must_ be outside. If you can reach her you are safe. Adieu, darling! I can keep the two foremost from following you, still!” The Marquise grasped a pistol in each hand, but she bent her brow—the haughty white brow that had never been carried more proudly than now—towards her child, and the girl’s pale lips clung to it lovingly, while she vowed that neither life nor death should part her from her mother. “It is all over, dear,” she said, calmly. “We can but die together as we have lived.”