the tower. A puff of smoke floated from the window like a little
cloud. The two men behind rushed to the spot and raised him, but he
was dead.

Sir Walter straightened himself and called out something that was
lost in another noise of firing; it was possible that the police
were already avenging their comrade from the other side. Fisher had
already raced round to the next window, and a new cry of
astonishment from him brought his patron to the same spot. Nolan,
the Irish policeman, had also fallen, sprawling all his great length
in the grass, and it was red with his blood. He was still alive when
they reached him, but there was death on his face, and he was only
able to make a final gesture telling them that all was over; and,
with a broken word and a heroic effort, motioning them on to where
his other comrades were besieging the back of the tower. Stunned by
these rapid and repeated shocks, the two men could only vaguely obey
the gesture, and, finding their way to the other windows at the
back, they discovered a scene equally startling, if less final and
tragic. The other two officers were not dead or mortally wounded,
but Macbride lay with a broken leg and his ladder on top of him,
evidently thrown down from the top window of the tower; while Wilson
lay on his face, quite still as if stunned, with his red head among
the gray and silver of the sea holly. In him, however, the impotence
was but momentary, for he began to move and rise as the others came
round the tower.

"My God! it's like an explosion!" cried Sir Walter; and indeed it
was the only word for this unearthly energy, by which one man had
been able to deal death or destruction on three sides of the same
small triangle at the same instant.