"Shoot the first man who crosses the line!"
"Ziff! me voici! moi! Gaspard Roussillon. Laissez-moi passer, messieurs."
A great body hurled itself frantically past Beverley and the guard, going out through the gateway against the wall of the crowd, bearing everything before it and shouting:
"Back, fools! you'll all be killed—the powder is on fire! Ziff! run!"
Wild as a March hare, he bristled with terror and foamed at the mouth. He stampeded the entire mass. There was a wild howl; a rush in the other direction followed, and soon enough the esplanade and all the space back to the barricades and beyond were quite deserted.
Alice was not aware that a serious accident had happened. Naturally she thought the great, rattling, crashing noise of the explosion a mere part of the spectacular show. When the rush followed, separating her and Beverley, it was a great relief to her in some way; for a sudden recognition of the boldness of her action in the little scene just ended, came over her and bewildered her. An impulse sent her running away from the spot where, it seemed to her, she had invited public derision. The terrible noises all around her were, she now fancied, but the jeering and hooting of rude men who had seen her unmaidenly forwardness.
With a burning face she flew to the postern and slipped out, once more taking the course which had become so familiar to her feet. She did not slacken her speed until she reached the Bourcier cabin, where she had made her home since the night when Hamilton's pistol ball struck her. The little domicile was quite empty of its household, but Alice entered and flung herself into a chair, where she sat quivering and breathless when Adrienne, also much excited, came in, preceded by a stream of patois that sparkled continuously.
"The fort is blown up!" she cried, gesticulating in every direction at once, her petite figure comically dilated with the importance of her statement. "A hundred men are killed, and the powder is on fire!"
She pounced into Alice's arms, still talking as fast as her tongue could vibrate, changing from subject to subject without rhyme or reason, her prattle making its way by skips and shies until what was really upper-most in her sweet little heart disclosed itself.
"And, O Alice! Rene has not come yet!"