with the tri-coloured flag; musket-muzzles peeped from the windows; men
with great squares of pavement lined the roofs. Romara mounted a stiff
barricade and beheld a scattered regiment running the gauntlet of storms
of shot and missiles, in full retreat upon the citadel. On they came,
officers in front for the charge, as usual with the Austrians; fire on
both flanks, a furious mob at their heels, and the barricade before them.
They rushed at Romara, and were hurled back, and stood in a riddled lump.
Suddenly Romara knocked up the rifles of the couching Swiss; he yelled to
the houses to stop firing. "Surrender your prisoners,--you shall pass,"
he called. He had seen one dear head in the knot of the soldiery. No
answer was given. Romara, with Angelo and his Swiss and the ranks of the
barricade, poured over and pierced the streaming mass, steel for steel.

"Ammiani! Ammiani!" Romara cried; a roar from the other side, "Barto!
Barto! the Great Cat!" met the cry. The Austrians struck up a cheer
under the iron derision of the bells; it was ludicrous, it was as if a
door had slammed on their mouths, ringing tremendous echoes in a vaulted
roof. They stood sweeping fire in two oblong lines; a show of military
array was preserved like a tattered robe, till Romara drove at their
centre and left the retreat clear across the barricade. Then the
whitecoats were seen flowing over, the motley surging hosts from the city
in pursuit--foam of a storm-torrent hurled forward by the black tumult of
precipitous waters. Angelo fell on his brother's neck; Romara clasped
Carlo Ammiani. These two were being marched from the prison to the
citadel when Barto Rizzo, who had prepared to storm the building,
assailed the troops. To him mainly they were indebted for their rescue.

Even in that ecstasy of meeting, the young men smiled at the
preternatural transport on his features as he bounded by them, mad for
slaughter, and mounting a small brass gun on the barricade, sent the