The burning pile, revealing rooms and passages red hot, throughgaps made in the crumbling walls; the tributary fires that lickedthe outer bricks and stones, with their long forked tongues, andran up to meet the glowing mass within; the shining of the flamesupon the villains who looked on and fed them; the roaring of the angry blaze, so bright and high that it seemed in its rapacity tohave swallowed up the very smoke; the living flakes the wind borerapidly away and hurried on with, like a storm of fiery snow; thenoiseless breaking of great beams of wood, which fell like featherson the heap of ashes, and crumbled in the very act to sparks andpowder; the lurid tinge that overspread the sky, and the darkness,very deep by contrast, which prevailed around; the exposure to thecoarse, common gaze, of every little nook which usages of home hadmade a sacred place, and the destruction by rude hands of everylittle household favourite which old associations made a dear andprecious thing: all this taking place--not among pitying looks andfriendly murmurs of compassion, but brutal shouts and exultations,which seemed to make the very rats who stood by the old house toolong, creatures with some claim upon the pity and regard of thoseits roof had sheltered:--combined to form a scene never to beforgotten by those who saw it and were not actors in the work, solong as life endured.
And who were they? The alarm-bell rang--and it was pulled by nofaint or hesitating hands--for a long time; but not a soul wasseen. Some of the insurgents said that when it ceased, they heardthe shrieks of women, and saw some garments fluttering in the air,as a party of men bore away no unresisting burdens. No one could say that this was true or false, in such an uproar; but where wasHugh? Who among them had seen him, since the forcing of the doors?
The cry spread through the body. Where was Hugh!
"Here!" he hoarsely cried, appearing from the darkness; out ofbreath, and blackened with the smoke. "We have done all we can;the fire is burning itself out; and even the corners where ithasn"t spread, are nothing but heaps of ruins. Disperse, my lads,while the coast"s clear; get back by different ways; and meet asusual!" With that, he disappeared again,--contrary to his wont,for he was always first to advance, and last to go away,--leavingthem to follow homewards as they would.
It was not an easy task to draw off such a throng. If Bedlam gateshad been flung wide open, there would not have issued forth suchmaniacs as the frenzy of that night had made. There were menthere, who danced and trampled on the beds of flowers as thoughthey trod down human enemies, and wrenched them from the stalks,like savages who twisted human necks. There were men who casttheir lighted torches in the air, and suffered them to fall upontheir heads and faces, blistering the skin with deep unseemlyburns. There were men who rushed up to the fire, and paddled in itwith their hands as if in water; and others who were restrained by force from plunging in, to gratify their deadly longing. On theskull of one drunken lad--not twenty, by his looks--who lay uponthe ground with a bottle to his mouth, the lead from the roof camestreaming down in a shower of liquid fire, white hot; melting hishead like wax. When the scattered parties were collected, men-livingyet, but singed as with hot irons--were plucked out of thecellars, and carried off upon the shoulders of others, who stroveto wake them as they went along, with ribald jokes, and left them,dead, in the passages of hospitals. But of all the howling throngnot one learnt mercy from, or sickened at, these sights; nor wasthe fierce, besotted, senseless rage of one man glutted.
Slowly, and in small clusters, with hoarse hurrahs and repetitionsof their usual cry, the assembly dropped away. The last few red-eyed stragglers reeled after those who had gone before; the distantnoise of men calling to each other, and whistling for others whomthey missed, grew fainter and fainter; at length even these soundsdied away, and silence reigned alone.
Silence indeed! The glare of the flames had sunk into a fitful,flashing light; and the gentle stars, invisible till now, lookeddown upon the blackening heap. A dull smoke hung upon the ruin, asthough to hide it from those eyes of Heaven; and the wind forbore to move it. Bare walls, roof open to the sky--chambers, where thebeloved dead had, many and many a fair day, risen to new life andenergy; where so many dear ones had been sad and merry; which wereconnected with so many thoughts and hopes, regrets and changes--allgone. Nothing left but a dull and dreary blank--a smouldering heapof dust and ashes--the silence and solitude of utter desolation.