At 8 o'clock in the evening three blasts on a whistle, strident as a factory hooter, put an end to the work of the monstrous organism. The battle had been raging for six hours in the night. Once more we were the victors, but at what a price! Dixmude, which the enemy's heavy artillery had battered incessantly during the attack, was not yet the "heap of pebbles and ashes," the line of blackened stones, it was presently to become, but its death agony had begun. Innumerable houses had been gutted. The entire quarter round the church was on fire. The rain, heavy as it was, could not extinguish the flames kindled by incendiary bombs. A projectile struck the belfry of Saint Nicolas at the hour of the Angelus; the great bell, mortally wounded, uttered a kind of dying groan, the vibrations of which quivered long in space. "Poor Dixmude!" cried a sailor; "your passing bell is tolling." Happily, the population was no longer on the spot. The Burgomaster had given the signal of exodus, and all had obeyed it, stricken to the heart, with the exception of the Carmelites and some dozen laggards and stubborn spirits, such as the old beadle described by M. T'Serstevens, who lived in a little gabled house with barred windows on the Grand' Place, and who, pipe in mouth, used to bring the keys of the church to visitors. He mumbled the rude Flemish dialect of the coast, and was tanned by the sea-wind. "The church, the house, the Place, the old man, were all in harmony: all embodied the unique soul of Mother Flanders," and all were destroyed at the same time; the old man was unable to disengage himself from his house, of which he seemed but a more animated stone than the rest. [Illustration: (Newspaper Illustrations) THE PARISH CHURCH AFTER THE FIRST DAYS OF THE BOMBARDMENT]