The soldiers, unable to take in the meaning of these gestures, looked at one another questioningly. Then Margarid, after another hasty glance at the redoubt, exchanged a few words with the girls round about her, seized a dagger, and, in quick succession struck three of the maidens, who had nobly bared their chaste bosoms to the knife. Meanwhile the other young women dispatched one another with steady hands. They had just fallen when Martha reappeared from the enclosure where the children had been hidden during the battle. Proud and serene, she held her two little daughters in her arms. A spare wagon-pole stood in front of her, the upper extremity of which was at a considerable elevation from the ground. She leaped on the edge of the car; a cord was around her neck. She passed the end of the cord through the ring at the extremity of the pole. Margarid steadied it in both hands. Martha leaped into the air with outspread arms, and hung there, strangled. Her two little children, instead of falling to the ground, remained suspended on either side of her breast, for she had passed the noose around their necks also. All this occurred so rapidly, that the Romans, at first struck dumb with astonishment and fear, had no time to prevent the heroic deaths. They had barely recovered from their amazement when Margarid, seeing all her family either dying or dead at her feet, raised to heaven her blood-stained knife, and exclaimed in a calm and steady voice: "Our daughters shall not be outraged; our children shall not be enslaved; all of us, of the family of Joel the brenn of the tribe of Karnak, dead, like our husbands and brothers, for the liberty of Gaul, are on our way to rejoin them above. Perhaps, O Hesus, all this spilled blood will appease you;" and with a hand which did not waver, she plunged the dagger into her own heart. All these terrible events which happened around the Chariot of Death I was compelled to behold, as I lay nearby, pinned to the ground. My wife Henory not having emerged from the enclosure, I concluded that she had put an end to herself there, first putting to death my little ones Sylvest and Syomara. My brain began to reel, my eyes closed; I felt that I was dying, and thanked Hesus for not leaving me behind alone when all my dear ones were to enter together upon the other life in the unknown world. But, no, it was here below, on earth, that I was to return to life--to face new torments after those I had just undergone. CHAPTER VIII. AFTER THE BATTLE.