As the melee was drawing to a close, Mr. Vosburgh saw Merwyn chasing a man who apparently had had much influence with his associates, and had been among the last to yield.  After a brief pursuit the young fellow stopped and fired.  The man struggled on a few steps, then fell.  Merwyn, panting, sat down on the curbstone, and here Mr. Vosburgh joined him with radiant face, exclaiming, as he wrung the young man’s hand:  “I’ve seen it all,—­seen how you smote them hip and thigh.  Never has my blood been so stirred.  The city is saved.  When a mob is thus dealt with it soon gives up.  Come, you have done more than your part.  Go with me, and as soon as I have sent a despatch about this glorious victory, we’ll have supper and a little rest.”

“Impossible, Mr. Vosburgh.  The inspector has heard that the mob is sacking the mayor’s house, and we have orders to march there at once.  I’ll get my wind in a moment.”

“But you are not under obligations, in view of all you have done.”

“I’m going to see this fight out.  If the force were ordered back to headquarters I’d go with you.”

“But you will come soon?”

“Yes; when the fighting is over for the night I’ll bring the latest news.  There, the men are falling in for their march up Broadway, and I must go.”

“Well, I congratulate you.  No soldier ever won greener laurels in so short a time.  What’s more, you were cool enough to be one of the most effective of the force.  I saw you picking off the leaders.  Good-by;” and he hastened away, while Merwyn followed Carpenter and the captured flag to a new scene of battle.

CHAPTER XLVI.

“I have seen that you detest me.”

After her father had left her on that eventful afternoon, Marian felt as if alone in a beleaguered fortress.  The familiar streets in which she had trundled her hoop as a child, and until to-day walked without fear, were now filled with nameless terrors.  She who had been so bent on going out in the morning would now as readily stroll in a tiger-infested jungle as to venture from her door.  When men like her father used such language and took such precautions as she had anxiously noted, she knew that dangers were manifold and great, that she was in the midst of the most ruthless phase of war.

But her first excitement had passed, and it had brought her such lessons that now her chief thought was to retrieve herself.  The one who had dwelt in her mind as so weak and unmanly as to be a constant cause of irritation had shown himself to be her superior, and might even equal the friends with whom she had been scornfully contrasting him.  That she should have spoken to him and treated him as she had done produced boundless self-reproach, while her egregious error in estimating his character was humiliating in the last degree.

“Fool! fool!” she said, aloud, “where was your woman’s intuition?”