“See here, Ryerson,” I broke in. “If you’re such a rotten coward and liar and sneak as you say you are, what are you doing here? Why didn’t you go ahead with your bomb business?” He sat rocking back and forth on the side of the bed, with his head bent forward, his eyes closed and his lips moving in a sort of thick mumbling. “I’ve tried to, but--it’s my sister. God! She won’t leave me alone. She said she’d be praying for me and--all night I’ve seen her face. I’ve seen her when we were kids together, playing around in the old home--with Mother there and--oh, Christ!” I pass over a desperate hour that followed. Ryerson tried to kill himself and, when I took the weapon from him, he begged me to put an end to his sufferings. Never until now had I realised how hard is the way of the transgressor. I have often wondered how this terrible night would have ended had not Providence suddenly intervened. The city hall clock had just tolled five when there came a volley of shots from the direction of Monument Avenue. “What’s that?” cried my poor friend, his haggard face lighting. We rushed to the window, where the pink and purple lights of dawn were spreading over the spires and gardens of the sleeping city. The shots grew in volume and presently we heard the dull boom of a siege gun, then another and another. “It’s a battle! They’re bombarding the city. Look!” He pointed towards Capitol Square. “They’ve struck the tower of the city hall. And over there! The gas works!” He swept his arm towards an angry red glow that showed where another shell had found its target. I shall not attempt to describe the burning of Richmond (for the third time in its history) on this fateful day, January 20th, 1922, nor to detail the horrors that attended the destruction of the enemy’s force of occupation. Historians are agreed that the Germans must be held blameless for firing on the city, since they naturally supposed this daybreak attack upon their own lines to be an effort of the American army and retaliated, as best they could, with their heavy guns. It was days before the whole truth was known, although I cabled the London _Times_ that night, explaining that the American army had nothing to do with this attack, which was the work of an unorganised and irresponsible band of ten or twelve thousand mountaineers gathered from the wilds of Virginia, North Carolina and Kentucky and Tennessee. They were moon-shiners, feudists, hilly-billies, small farmers and basket-makers, men of lean and saturnine appearance, some of them horse thieves, pirates of the forest who cared little for the laws of God or man and fought as naturally as they breathed.