As the day drew towards a close, the panes were less frequently shaken by the thunder of the artillery, the noise in the streets diminished, but the house became more and more filled with suffocating smoke.

Night came, the lamp was lighted, the women started at every new sound, but anxiety for Adam now overpowered every other feeling in Ruth’s mind.  Just then the door opened, and the smith’s deep voice called in the vestibule:  “It is I!  Don’t be frightened, it is I!”

He had gone out with five journeymen:  he returned with two.  The others lay slain in the streets, and with them Count Oberstein’s soldiers, the only ones who had stoutly resisted the Spanish mutineers and their allies to the last man.

Adam had swung his hammer on the Mere and by the Zucker Canal among the citizens, who fought desperately for the property and lives of their families;—­but all was vain.  Vargas’s troopers had stifled even the last breath of resistance.

The streets ran blood, corpses lay in heaps before the doors and on the pavement—­among them the bodies of the Margrave of Antwerp, Verreyck, Burgomaster van der Mere, and many senators and nobles.  Conflagration after conflagration crimsoned the heavens, the superb city-hall was blazing, and from a thousand windows echoed the screams of the assailed, plundered, bleeding citizens, women and children.

The smith hastily ate a few mouthfuls to restore his strength, then raised his head, saying:  “No one has touched our house.  The door and shutters of neighbor Ykens’ are shattered.”

“A miracle!” cried old Rahel, raising her staff.  “The generation of vipers scent richer booty than iron at the silversmith’s.”

Just at that moment the knocker sounded.  Adam started up, put on his coat of mail again, motioned to his journeymen and went to the door.

Rahel shrieked loudly:  “To the cellar, Ruth.  Oh, God, oh, God, have mercy upon us!  Quick—­where’s my shawl?—­They are attacking us!—­Come, come!  Oh, I am caught, I can go no farther!”

Mortal terror had seized the old woman; she did not want to die.  To the girl death was welcome, and she did not stir.

Voices were now audible in the vestibule, but they sounded neither noisy nor threatening; yet Rahel shrieked in despair as a lansquenet, fully armed, entered the workshop with the armorer.

Hans Eitelfritz had come to look for Ulrich’s father.  In his arms lay the dog Lelaps, which, bleeding from the wound made by a bullet, that grazed its neck, nestled trembling against its master.

Bowing courteously to Ruth, the soldier said: