Third and Fourth regiments ought to take them in the rear about
the same time. You will continue to pick them off from the
roof.''

The two supporting columns had already started on their
roundabout way to the rear of the Palace. Clay gathered up his
reins, and telling his men to keep close to the walls, started
forward, his soldiers following on the sidewalks and leaving
the middle of the street clear. As they reached a point a
hundred yards below the Palace, a part of the wooden shield
behind the fence was thrown down, there was a puff of white smoke
and a report, and a cannon-ball struck the roof of a house which
they were passing and sent the tiles clattering about their
heads. But the men in the lead had already reached the stage-
door of the theatre and were opposite one of the doors to the
club. They drove these in with the butts of their rifles, and
raced up the stairs of each of the deserted buildings until they
reached the roof. Langham was swept by a weight of men across a
stage, and jumped among the music racks in the orchestra. He
caught a glimpse of the early morning sun shining on the tawdry
hangings of the boxes and the exaggerated perspective of the
scenery. He ran through corridors between two great statues of
Comedy and Tragedy, and up a marble stair case to a lobby in
which he saw the white faces about him multiplied in long
mirrors, and so out to an iron balcony from which he looked down,
panting and breathless, upon the Palace Gardens, swarming with
soldiers and white with smoke. Men poured through the windows of
the club opposite, dragging sofas and chairs out to the balcony
and upon the flat roof. The men near him were tearing down the
yellow silk curtains in the lobby and draping them along the