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Updated: June 15, 2025
He died in that prison, and within those dingy smoke-blackened walls my childhood was spent a joyless childhood, without a hope, without a dream, haunted perpetually by the dark phantom, Poverty.
Further away sounded the singing; one or another of the banners still gleamed red out of the new town's smoke-blackened void; then they disappeared in the sun-lit plain. There should have been roses Of the large, pale yellow ones.
From Pelle's little two-roomed flat, a door and a couple of steps led down into a large room which occupied the entire upper floor of the side building, and was not unlike the ruins of a former banqueting-hall. The heavy, smoke-blackened ceiling went right up under the span roof and had once been decorated; but most of the plaster had now fallen down, and the beams threatened to follow it.
Yet it thrust itself persistently upon me again and again as I approached the smoke-blackened walls of the ruined building and gazed with horrified eyes at the constantly accumulating evidences of the desperate character of the attack and defence. I believed I could pretty accurately picture what had happened.
The women, in their many-coloured kerchiefs, stirred polenta at the smoke-blackened chimney, whose huge pent-house roof projects two feet or more across the hearth. When they had served the table they took their seat on low stools, knitted stockings, or drank out of glasses handed across the shoulder to them by their lords.
"There was a locket on the child's neck. Wouldn't it be well to remove it? It is marked with a name that must be forgotten." He looked at me gratefully as he fumbled at the trinket with his long, smoke-blackened fingers, while I trembled with my desire to have it safe in my own hands. It was the one thing left to prove the truth.
Smoke-blackened and seasoned by wind and rain they were dark blotches sentineling the shore of the big lake. Behind them, beyond the willows, were the Indian dogs. From them came an occasional whine, a deep sigh, the snapping of a jaw, and in the gloom their bodies moved restlessly. In the tepees was the spell of this same unrest. Sleep was never quite sure of itself.
In the middle of the main street were half a dozen smoke-blackened houses which remained standing, an oasis in the sea of destruction, with doors and windows intact facing gaps where doors and windows had been. We entered with a sense of awe of the chance which had spared these buildings. "Sister Julie!" the major called.
In the cowshed where Wake had lain, two figures awaited me. The talc-enclosed candle revealed Hamilton and Amos, dirty beyond words, smoke-blackened, blood-stained, and intricately bandaged. They stood stiffly to attention. 'Sirr, the prisoner, said Hamilton. 'I have to report that the prisoner is deid. I stared at them, for I had forgotten Ivery.
Yell after yell now arose from a distance as the three houses rapidly began to blaze and add to the lurid glare that was illumining the whole interior of the enclosure, while groups of smoke-blackened men were watching the destruction going on. "Better seek cover, my lads," cried Colonel Preston. "Get your pieces, and be ready. We can do no more there. It must burn."
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