A NOCTURNAL RIDE.

Of the details of this ride I need hardly speak. Anxious to avoid the rioters, I steered my course by as northerly a curve as was practicable. The street lamps were, of course, unlighted, but the glow of innumerable fires reflected from every window, and beaten downwards by the crimson clouds overhead, was now turning night into day. As I galloped through the streets of Marylebone, I caught a glimpse of the Attila wheeling far away over what seemed to be Kensington. But of the few awkward incidents I can scarcely now remember one; my chief enemy indeed was a poignant anxiety about Lena.

178It must have been ten o’clock by the time I galloped into Islington, tired, hungry, and unkempt, but devoured by emotions which sternly forbade a halt.

Five minutes brought me to the villa, and throwing the reins over the railing, I pushed the gate aside and entered. The door of the house was open, and the sound of voices came from within. Revolver in hand I entered, but a glance dispelled my apprehensions. The little room so familiar to me was full of terrified women, with here and there a sturdy workman among them. At my entrance there was something like a panic, but I speedily reassured the company.

“Where are Miss Northerton and the old lady?” was my first question after soothing the tumult. A sister of charity came forward.

“Up-stairs. Do you bring any message? Mrs. Hartmann, I must tell you, is dying.”

“But Miss——?”

“Is safe and in attendance upon her.”

A wave of delight rolled through me. How selfish we all are! The news about Mrs. Hartmann weighed as nothing with me for the minute.

“Can I send a message to the young lady?”

“Is it important?”

“Very.”

“Then I will take it myself.”

179I scribbled a few words on a scrap of paper and handed it to the sister, who immediately left the room. I had not long to wait before she returned, saying that the lady would see me up-stairs.

I was shown up to the sick-room, where Lena was sitting by the bedside. She greeted me with a regard chastened by the gravity of the occasion. After a moment’s delay, I stepped up to the bed and looked at the patient. She had been unconscious, so they told me, for some time, and was now dying rapidly. A few hurried whispered words told the story. Mrs. Hartmann had gone to Westminster with Lena on the fatal morning of the previous day, to witness the great labour demonstration, and the old lady had been brutally trampled in Parliament Street by the mob. Indeed, but for a company of volunteers who succeeded in momentarily beating back the rush, both ladies would have perished, said the sister. Mrs. Hartmann, thus barely snatched from death, had felt well enough to struggle back to Islington with Lena, having, after an hour of weary waiting, and at great expense, procured a cart and driver. Everything seemed on the high-road to chaos, and the return was only accomplished after great risks had been run from the mob. Things looked better, however, when they managed to get out of the more 180central districts, and ultimately they reached the villa in safety, considerably surprised at the relatively quiet state of the neighbourhood. Soon after entering the house, however, Mrs. Hartmann was attacked by violent pains and nausea, and on the advent of a friendly doctor it was found that she had sustained the most grave internal injuries. H?morrhage set in later, and she rapidly became worse. Before becoming unconscious she had dictated a letter for her son (nobody knew that he was alive, added my informant), and had desired Lena to hand it to me for transmission. Very pathetic in character, it narrated the facts here recorded, and e............