"Quarter for the love of God, and her Majesty the Queen!" echoed the British rebels, on finding that all was over.
Papineau, if there, was nowhere to be found; and Smash, though seen often, had disappeared.
In the apartment where we left her, Aurelia Darnel had heard all the dreadful uproar around her—the myriad horrible sounds of a combat on which she dared not look, and she lay in a corner, gathered, as it were, in a heap, though on her knees, unable even to form a prayer, stunned, crushed, and bewildered, with but one thought—"Roland dead!"
Steps, sounds rather, drew near the room; the door was flung open and Ithuriel Smash, pale as death, bleeding from more than one wound in his body, and with a dreadful rattle-snake expression in his eyes—an expression of agony, madness, and rage, staggered in; then he fell on his hands, and came crawling slowly, panting and groaning, towards her, leaving a track of his own blood—"the trail of the serpent" behind him on the floor.
His long knife was clenched in his teeth; his murderous intention was plain—to slay her would be his last effort, and in the corner where she crouched, Aurelia could not escape him!
She uttered a low wail of despair, ending in an involuntary shriek for help—help for the love of God! And help came.
Poetic and dramatic justice would require that the obnoxious Colonel Smash should perish by the hand of Roland; but responsive to her cry, there burst into the room, Logan of Logan Braes and a few of the Royals, by whom he was speedily bayoneted like a reptile or mad dog, and he died, biting at the bayonets, like a dog or a savage.
Logan tenderly raised the half-dead girl from the floor, and in a few minutes after, the caressing arms of Roland, caressing and reassuring, were around her—and she felt safe then—doubly safe with him and her mother.