surrounding yards and passageways searching for the murderer. "Where is
he?" "What has become of him?" were the questions on every lip.

Suddenly the answer came in a shot from the room directly overhead. It
was fired through a window facing Saratoga Street, and the bullet struck
down a young man named Alfred J. Bloomfield, who was standing in the
narrow passage-way between the two houses. He fell on his knees and a
second bullet stretched him dead.

When he fled from the closet Charles took refuge in the upper story of
the house. There are four windows on that floor, two facing toward
Saratoga Street and two toward Rampart. The murderer kicked several
breaches in the frail central partition, so he could rush from side to
side, and like a trapped beast, prepared to make his last stand.

Nobody had dreamed that he was still in the house, and when Bloomfield
was shot there was a headlong stampede. It was some minutes before the
exact situation was understood. Then rifles and pistols began to speak,
and a hail of bullets poured against the blind frontage of the old
house. Every one hunted some coign of vantage, and many climbed to
adjacent roofs. Soon the glass of the four upper windows was shattered
by flying lead. The fusillade sounded like a battle, and the excitement
upon the streets was indescribable.

Throughout all this hideous uproar Charles seems to have retained a
certain diabolical coolness. He kept himself mostly out of sight, but
now and then he thrust the gleaming barrel of his rifle through one of
the shattered window panes and fired at his besiegers. He worked the
weapon with incredible rapidity, discharging from three to five
cartridges each time before leaping back to a place of safety. These