Recovered from their first surprise, the soldiers pushed rudely forward upon the affrighted women, overwhelmed them with insults, and were about to lay hands upon them; serious opposition on the part of the boy they never for a moment contemplated. What, then, was their astonishment when, with his left foot planted firmly behind him, he fiercely brandished his ax, and defied them to come on. For a moment the young champion checked their onset; then, as one of them thought with a single thrust of his sword to pierce him through, he parried the weapon, and struck with the force of despair at the shoulder of his assailant, who immediately staggered backward and fell into the arms of his comrades. At the same moment the youth himself, as though he had received his deathwound from some unseen hand, fell heavily to the ground, and there lay senseless and motionless by the side of the women he had endeavored to protect. The soldiers, pressing about their wounded comrade, proceeded to remove his accoutrements and clothes amid frightful imprecations and threats of vengeance; while the elder female, still on her knees, with floods of tears, and in lieartrending accents, sued for mercy.
"Oh, sirs!" she cried, addressing the soldiers in their own tongue, "have but pity on us, miserable creatures that we are! Do not murder us, for the love of our merciful Lord, and as you shall one day yourselves look for mercy from Him! God knows we have suffered more than enough already; and what can the death of two defenseless women profit you?"
"That is the mother of the Butcher that made such slaughter of our people at Male," cried one; "death to her!"
"Oh, no, no, Messire!" pursued the old woman, "dip not your hands in my blood! I beseech you, by the bitter passion of our Lord, let us live! Take all we have: but spare our lives!"
"Your money—your gold!" interrupted a rough voice.
She immediately seized a casket that stood behind her, and threw it to the soldiers. "There, sirs," she said, "that is all we have left to us in the world—take it; I give it to you with good will."
The lid of the casket flew open as it fell, and a quantity of gold pieces and various costly jewels rolled from it upon the floor. A general scramble for the booty ensued; but while the rest were thus occupied, one of them seized the maiden by the arm, and threw her violently on the ground.
“Mother! help me, mother!" gasped the poor girl with a fainting voice that in an instant roused the parent's heart into a frenzy of desperation. With flashing eyes and quivering lip, she sprang like a wild tigress on the soldier, twined her arms about him, and dug her nails, as if they had been claws, into his face, so that the blood streamed down his cheeks.
*'My child!" she screamed, "my child! Villain!"
Maddened with the pain, and yet unwilling to loose his hold, the soldier brought the point of his sword against the mother's breast, and pitilessly thrust it deep into her body. Instantly her grasp relaxed, her eyes grew dim, her blood gushed upon the floor, and staggering against the side-beams of the loft, she clutched at them for support.
Regardless of the maiden's screams, the soldier proceeded to tear the golden drops from her ears, and to strip the pearls from her neck and the rings from her fingers; then with a malignant smile he stabbed her to the heart. "Now," said he to the dying mother, with a devilish sneer, "now you can take your long journey in company, you Flemish jades!" With a last expiring effort she sprang forward, and, uttering a single piercing cry, fell dead upon the lifeless body of her child.
All this scene of horror had occupied but a few short moments; and the mother and daughter had already exchanged this world for a better ere the other soldiers had finished their scramble for the contents of the casket. When that was over, and everything that the loft contained of any value appropriated, the plunderers left the house to repeat the like elsewhere; while throughout the city the unhappy burghers, driven from their habitations by force or terror, wandered through the streets, exposed to the insults of their oppressors, and deeming themselves fortunate to escape so easily. At last, about midday, a strong party of men-atarms traversed the city to call back the troops, Messire de Chatillon deeming that the honor of the French crown was now sufficiently avenged; and proclamation was at the same time made that all might freely bury their dead, and return without fear to their homes.
Some of Breydel's Claward friends now proceeded to his house, took up the bodies of his mother and sister, and conveyed them on a bier to the gate leading toward Damme. Here was to be seen a new spectacle of misery, enough to move with pity the hardest heart. Crowds of wailing mothers, weeping children, and men feeble with age were beseeching on their knees for permission to leave the city; while the soldiers, whose orders were to keep the gates closed, disregarded their entreaties, and only made a mock of their tears and lamentations. Thus they waited and supplicated for some time in vain, till one of the women conceived
