was very near.

The fight must already be raging in Leipzigerstrasse.

At last the porter came back and announced that barricades had been built
at the corner of Mauer- and Friedrichstrasse, and that a violent conflict
had broken out there and in other places between the soldiers and the
citizens. And our Martha was in Friedrichstrasse, and did not come. We
lived beyond the gate, and it was not to be expected that fighting would
break out in our neighbourhood; but back of our gardens, in the vicinity
of the Potsdam railway station, the beating of drums was heard. The
firing, however, which became more and more violent, was louder than any
other noise; and when we saw our mother wild with anxiety, we, too, began
to be alarmed for our dear, sweet Martha.

It was already dark, and still we waited in vain.

At last some one rang. Our mother hurried to the door--a thing she never
did.

When we, too, ran into the hall, she had her arms around the child who
had incurred such danger, and we little ones kissed her also, and Martha
looked especially pretty in her happy astonishment at such a reception.

She, too, had been anxious enough while good Heinrich, General Maeyer's
servant, who had been his faithful comrade in arms from 1813 to 1815,
brought her home through all sorts of by-ways. But they had been obliged
in various places to pass near where the fighting was going on, and the
tender-hearted seventeen-year-old girl had seen such terrible things that
she burst into tears as she described them.