This
simple and hasty construction, with an extremely inartificial office
erected around the stack of a chimney, embraced nearly all that could be
done, until time and assistance should enable them to commence other
dwellings. In clearing the ruins of the little tower of its rubbish, the
remains of those who had perished in the fray were piously collected. The
body of the youth who had died in the earlier hours of the attack, was
found, but half-consumed, in the court, and the bones of two more, who
fell within the block, were collected from among the ruins. It had now
become a melancholy duty to consign them all to the earth, with decent
solemnity.
The time selected for this sad office was just as the western horizon
began to glow with that which one of our own poets has so beautifully
termed, "the pomp that brings and shuts the day." The sun was in the
tree-tops, and a softer or sweeter light could not have been chosen for
such a ceremony. Most of the fields still lay in the soft brightness of
the hour, though the forest was rapidly getting the more obscure look of
night.
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