Day by day the time crept on toward the end of June, and brought no change to the garrison. There were fewer mouths, it is true, to feed now, for disease and battle had laid them under heavy contribution, but the store of provisions was rapidly becoming exhausted. A fortnight more, so they believed and said, would bring them face to face with actual starvation, and the city must fall from want of men to line the walls and man the guns. For surrender they would not. “First the prisoners and then each other,” was their grim jest that had an edge of earnest with it. No man now dared to whisper the prudence of surrender, for the spirit of resistance, which had been strong before, now burned with a wild and splendid flame as they felt the end was coming. The enthusiasm of the Ulster man does not find its outlet in boisterous speech--as his excitement increases his silence deepens, and he is, unlike his Celtic countryman, ever readier with his hand than with his tongue. And now, though hope was growing fainter as the days dragged on, their pride--the stern pride of religion and of race--inspired them with an obstinacy that had something sublime in it. Yet all the while the ships lay in the Lough and made no effort to come to their relief. Day by day they signalled in vain from the Cathedral tower and the great guns rang out, but Kirke would make no move. So close was the investment now, every loophole guarded with the extremest vigilance, that communication was impossible. One brave man had indeed made his way from the fleet to the city after passing through perils innumerable; but though he made the attempt, he found himself unable to return. Another messenger had bravely volunteered to carry out their message of despair, but he never reached the ships. A day or two after, the enemy erected a gallows on the bastion across the river, and there in the sight of the city the gallant fellow met his fate. Dorothy Carew never looked back on this time without a shudder. She suffered more than many, for to the hardships she endured she added a private and peculiar sorrow of her own. The first she bore cheerfully and uncomplainingly, but her brother´s secret, so base and so contemptible, oppressed her with a terrible feeling of shame and distress. After her first outburst of confidence to Gervase Orme, which she sometimes half regretted, she watched her brother jealously, and lay night after night listening for his footsteps.