"They are gone back to Down Cottage. I got out of the coach at the turn to Brandon Hill. The children looked so well and happy, and my mother has made them so cosy and comfortable."
Then Joyce took up her post by her husband's bed. The doctor, who came in later, said that he was to be kept very quiet and free from excitement; and, he added, "I wish, indeed, he were further from the town, for I greatly fear worse things are at hand."
The story of that fearful Sunday is too well known to need any minute description here.
Hour by hour the tumult increased; forked flames shot up into the gray, autumnal sky, as the governor's house at the gaol and the chapel were set on fire by the rioters; and, as the benches in the interior of the chapel had been rubbed with pitch, the whole was soon devoured. The county prison followed, and, at half-past eight on Sunday evening, the lurid glare in the heavens was awful to witness.
Poor little Falcon, clasped in his mother's arms as she sat in the window-seat, hid his face in her breast and at last, worn out with terror and excitement, fell asleep. Then she carried him to a room at the back of the house, where Mrs. Arundel and the maids had taken refuge, and returned to watch by Gilbert's side. In her secret heart she was thankful that the "blow at a venture" had prevented her husband from being in the seething crowd below. How terrible would have been her watch had she known that he was there, in the very thick of the fray.
Gilbert lay very still, and often slept, though, in spite of the thick curtains drawn round the large four-post bed, the red glare from without was distinctly visible.
"Joyce," he said, when this glare had become fiercer and more fierce every moment; "Joyce, what are they burning?"
"I cannot tell," she said. "I think it must be the Palace; but it looks like the whole city. It is very terrible."
"Draw back the curtain for a moment, and let me look."
She obeyed him, and lifted also the curtain which shaded the window nearest the bed.