She concluded that some military force had arrived, and that
if she could maintain her present post, she hoped that the
extreme danger might pass. But while she indulged in these
hopes, a dark cloud of smoke came descending in the garden.
It could not be produced by musket or carbine: its volume was
too heavy even for ordnance: and in a moment there were sparks
mingled with its black form; and then the shouting and
shrieking which had in some degree subsided, suddenly broke
out again with increased force and wildness. The Castle was
on fire.
Whether from heedlessness or from insane intention, for the
deed sealed their own doom, the drunken Hell-cats brandishing
their torches, while they rifled the cellars and examined
every closet and corner of the offices, had set fire to the
lower part of the building, and the flames that had for some
time burnt unseen, had now gained the principal chambers. The
Bishop was lying senseless in the main cellar, surrounded by
his chief officers in the same state: indeed the whole of the
basement was covered with the recumbent figures of Hell-cats,
as black and thick as torpid flies during the last days of
their career. The funeral pile of the children of Woden was a
sumptuous one; it was prepared and lighted by themselves; and
the flame that, rising from the keep of Mowbray, announced to
the startled country that in a short hour the splendid
mimickry of Norman rule would cease to exist, told also the
pitiless fate of the ruthless savage, who, with analogous
pretension, had presumed to style himself the Liberator of the
People.
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