there in that infernal pile, and she wanted to die with them.

"Quick! quick!" gasped the man. "Take my necktie and fasten her hands
behind her." I obeyed; and as I wound the silken strip tight around the
unhappy woman's wrist, her despairing gaze fixed itself in deadly hate
upon my face, and her foaming lips cursed me for keeping her away from
her children. As her husband carried her away, her curses pierced the
air; and although I could not understand the words, I understood that
she spoke of the "Czrny Bog," or, as the Russians say, "Cserny Boh," the
"Black God" of the Slavs--Death.

By this time the horrible tower was burning brightly, and the night was
all aglow with the glaring light, and still those terrible shrieks from
human voices resounded to and fro.

The young artist had a picturesque scene for his pencil, and kept making
sketch after sketch. The burning wreck, the flying cinders, the red mist
around the black pine woods on the rocky wall of the mountain, and that
small span of star-lit heaven above; all those frightened, maddened,
running, crouching, creeping men and women around, with the chanting
Jew, in his long silken _caftan_ and dangling locks, in the midst of
them, made a picture of terrible sublimity.

But still the god of destruction was unsatisfied, and his fiery maw
opened for more victims. The unhappy young husband had succeeded in
tearing up his clothes and knotting the strips together. A compassionate
woman had given him a shawl, which he fastened to the bushes. On this he
descended into that mouth of hell. The perilous attempt succeeded so far
that, with one mad leap, he landed on the top of the uppermost car with
its pile of stones, and then, with cat-like dexterity and desperate