CHAPTER XIX THE HOUR OF VICTORY I To the women and children shut up in the different churches and in the houses throughout the city, during those terrible hours whilst their husbands, brothers, sons were making their last desperate stand, it was indeed hell let loose; for while the men were doing, they could only wait and pray. It was impossible for them even to wander out to try and help the wounded or to seek amongst the dead for the one dear face, the mirror of all joy and happiness. They all sat or knelt huddled up together, their children closely held in their arms, murmuring those vague words of comfort, of surmise, of hope and of fear which come mechanically to the lips when every sense is lulled into a kind of torpor with the terrible imminence of the danger and the overwhelming power of grief. The danger in the houses was greater than in the churches, for everywhere the horrible concussion of artillery and the crash of falling masonry broke the windows and shook the floors. But many women have that same instinct which causes the beasts of the forests to hide within their lair; they feel that they would rather see their home fall in about their heads, than watch its destruction from a safer distance. Clémence van Rycke refused to leave her house when first Laurence received Lenora’s warning of the impending catastrophe; she refused to leave it now when her sons were face to face with death and any moment a stray cannon ball might bring the walls down with a crash. She sat in the high-backed chair in the small withdrawing-room where, less than a week ago, the first card was played in that desperate game for human lives which was finding its climax at this hour; she sat quite still--staring into the empty hearth with that stolidity peculiar to these women of the North--and which is only another, calmer, form of courage. The High-Bailiff, sullen and silent, sat close to the table with his head buried in his hands. Since his return from his humiliating errand this afternoon he had not spoken a word to anyone--he believed that the Orangist cause was doomed, and both his sons certain of death. What happened to him after that he really did not care. Pierre and Jeanne sat in the hall together, quietly telling their beads. The din outside was deafening, and the evening hour was slowly creeping on--day yielded to twilight; a brilliant sunset lit up for a while the desolation of an entire city, then sank into a blood-hued horizon, adding its own lurid light to the crimson glow of burning buildings. And as the veils of night fell more heavily over the city, gradually the dismal sounds of cannon and musketry were stilled. Pierre came in after a while carrying a lamp. "Firing has ceased," he said, "men are running down the streets shouting that the Kasteel is in our hands and that the Duke of Alva has surrendered to Leatherface!"