With such alarms at three inner points--to say nothing of the noise at the more distant Porte Neuve--it seemed impossible that any part of the city could remain in ignorance of the attack. In truth, as he stood peering down into the dark Corraterie, and listening to the heavy tramp of unseen feet, now here, now there, and the orders that rose from unseen throats--even as he prepared to turn, summoned by a warning cry from Marcadel, the first note of the alarm-bell smote his ear. One moment and the air hummed with its heavy challenge, and all of Geneva that still slept awoke and stood upright. Men ran half naked from their houses. Boys in their teens snatched arms and sallied forth. White faces looked into the night from barred windows or lofty dormers; and across narrow wynds and under dark Gothic entries men dragged huge chains and hooked them, and hurried on to where the alarm seemed loudest and the risk most pressing. In an instant in pitch-dark alleys lights gleamed and steel jarred on stone; out of the darkness deep voices shouted questions, or answered or gave orders, and from a thousand houses, alike in the wealthy Bourg du Four with its three-storied piles and in the sordid lanes about the water and the bridges, went up one wail of horror and despair. Men who had dreamed of this night for years, and feared it as they feared God's day, awoke to find their dream a fact, and never while they lived forgot that awakening. While women left alone in their homes bolted and barred and fell to prayers; or clasped to their breasts babes who prattled, not understanding the turmoil, or why their mothers looked strangely on them. Something of this, something of the horror of that sudden awakening, and of the confusion in the narrow streets, where voices cried that the enemy were here or there or in a third place, and the bravest knew not which way to turn, penetrated to Claude on the roof of the tower; and at the thought of Anne and the perils that encircled her--for about the house in the Corraterie the uproar rose loudest--his heart melted. But he had not long to dwell on her peril; not long to dwell on anything. Before the great bell had hurled its warning abroad three times he had to go. Marcadel's voice, urgent, insistent, summoned him to the stairhead. "They are mustering at the bottom!" the man whispered over his shoulder. He was on his knees, his head in the hood of the staircase. The wounded man, breathing stertorously, still cumbered the upper steps. Marcadel rested one hand on him.