The fate of those in the block was too
evidently approaching its close, to allow of any interest in such an
episode to the great tragedy of the moment.
The character of the contest had in some measure changed. There was no
longer any immediate apprehension from the missiles of the assailants,
though danger pressed upon the besieged in a new and even in a more
horrible aspect. Now and then indeed an arrow quivered in the openings of
the loops, and the blunt Dudley had once a narrow escape from the passage
of a bullet, which, guided by chance, or aimed by a hand surer than
common, glanced through one of the narrow slits, and would have terminated
the history of the borderer, had not the head it obliquely encountered,
been too solid to yield even to such an assault. The attention of the
garrison was chiefly called to the imminent danger of the surrounding
fire. Though the probability of such an emergency as that in which the
family was now placed, had certainly been foreseen, and in some degree
guarded against, in the size of the area and in the construction of the
block, yet it was found that the danger exceeded all former calculations.
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