The next I knew after that I was awakened out of a sound sleep by a man who walked up and down close beside me.  His face was drawn and strained, and the sweat rolled down his nose from his forehead.  One hand was clutched tightly against his chest by the other hand, and blood dripped down upon the floor as he walked.  He wore the uniform of the Mercenaries.  From without, as through thick walls, came the muffled roar of bursting bombs.  I was in some building that was locked in combat with some other building.

A surgeon came in to dress the wounded soldier, and I learned that it was two in the afternoon.  My headache was no better, and the surgeon paused from his work long enough to give me a powerful drug that would depress the heart and bring relief.  I slept again, and the next I knew I was on top of the building.  The immediate fighting had ceased, and I was watching the balloon attack on the fortresses.  Some one had an arm around me and I was leaning close against him.  It came to me quite as a matter of course that this was Ernest, and I found myself wondering how he had got his hair and eyebrows so badly singed.

It was by the merest chance that we had found each other in that terrible city.  He had had no idea that I had left New York, and, coming through the room where I lay asleep, could not at first believe that it was I. Little more I saw of the Chicago Commune.  After watching the balloon attack, Ernest took me down into the heart of the building, where I slept the afternoon out and the night.  The third day we spent in the building, and on the fourth, Ernest having got permission and an automobile from the authorities, we left Chicago.

My headache was gone, but, body and soul, I was very tired.  I lay back against Ernest in the automobile, and with apathetic eyes watched the soldiers trying to get the machine out of the city.  Fighting was still going on, but only in isolated localities.  Here and there whole districts were still in possession of the comrades, but such districts were surrounded and guarded by heavy bodies of troops.  In a hundred segregated traps were the comrades thus held while the work of subjugating them went on.  Subjugation meant death, for no quarter was given, and they fought heroically to the last man.*

* Numbers of the buildings held out over a week, while one held out eleven days.  Each building had to be stormed like a fort, and the Mercenaries fought their way upward floor by floor.  It was deadly fighting.  Quarter was neither given nor taken, and in the fighting the revolutionists had the advantage of being above.  While the revolutionists were wiped out, the loss was not one-sided.  The proud Chicago proletariat lived up to its ancient boast.  For as many of itself as were killed, it killed that many of the enemy.

Whenever we approached such localities, the guards turned us back and sent us around.  Once, the only way past two strong positions of the comrades was through a burnt section that lay between.  From either side we could hear the rattle and roar of war, while the automobile picked its way through smoking ruins and tottering walls.  Often the streets were blocked by mountains of debris that compelled us to go around.  We were in a labyrinth of ruin, and our progress was slow.