"News has come in ten minutes ago of a fierce and sudden attack upon the Saxons by Lord Byfield from Windsor, but there are, as yet, no details.
"From the office across the river I am being constantly asked for details of the fight, and how it is progressing. In Southwark the excitement is evidently most intense, and it requires all the energy of the local commanders of the Defenders to repress another sortie across that bridge.
"There has just occurred an explosion so terrific that the whole of this building has been shaken as though by an earthquake.
"London has struck her first blow of revenge. What will be its sequel?"
CHAPTER II.
SCENES AT WATERLOO BRIDGE.
The following is the personal narrative of a young chauffeur named John Burgess, who assisted in the defence of the barricade at Waterloo Bridge.
The statement was made to a reporter at noon on October 5, while he was lying on a mattress in the Church of St. Martin's-in-the-Fields, so badly wounded in the chest that the surgeons had given him up.
He related his story in the form of a farewell letter to his sister. The reporter chanced to be passing, and, hearing him asking for some one to write for him, volunteered to do so.