Page:While Caroline Was Growing.djvu/258

 the sing-song murmur so well known to those who crept upon her unawares.

"I am all alone; the rest have gone—where have they gone!—where could they go? Oh, they're dead. Murdered! No, the town was besieged, and we made ropes with our hair, and bowstrings.... And they all marched out, and they closed the city gates...." Slower and slower the pedals moved: Caroline was pushing uphill. "So then the Mayor said: 'No, this sacrifice is too great—I can not allow you to make it, my brave children. Death—and worse—await you beyond these walls. Let us die here together.'" Her chin quivered. At the summit of the hill she paused.

"'Then die! Die like the dogs you are!' cried the Captain"—with feet perched high she swooped down the slope, her heart pounding with excitement, narrowly escaping collision at the bottom with an empty van, crawling through the heat, manned by a somnolent, huddled driver. Its hollow, cumbrous rattling pointed sharply the loneliness of the silent road, almost bare now of houses, for they were on the very outskirts of the