Weird and striking were the scenes within those hallowed places, as, in the half darkness with the long, deep shadows, men struggled for life or gave to the women kneeling at their side their name, their address, or a last dying message to one they loved.
London that night was a city of shattered homes, of shattered hopes, of shattered lives.
The silence of death had fallen everywhere. The only sounds that broke the quiet within those churches were the sighs, groans, and faint murmurings of the dying.
CHAPTER VII.
GERMANS SACKING THE BANKS.
Day dawned dismally and wet on September the 21st.
Over London the sky was still obscured by the smoke-pall, though as the night passed many of the raging fires had spent themselves.
Trafalgar Square was filled with troops who had piled arms and were standing at their ease. The men were laughing and smoking, enjoying a rest after the last forward movement and the street fighting of that night of horrors.
The losses on both sides during the past three days had been enormous; of the number of London citizens killed and wounded it was impossible to calculate. There had, in the northern suburbs, been wholesale butchery everywhere, so gallantly had the barricades been defended.