It was empty of life as a tomb, but they beat and tore and battered and broke and hammered and shattered like madmen; they reduced the tawdry interior to a mere chaos, and came pouring forth laden with trophies of ruin.

And then there was a charry smell in the air, and a slender feather of smoke floated up from a second-story window.
At the same time Watts led an assault on the adjoining house--an assault which came to a sudden pause, for, from cracks in the front wall, a squirrel-rifle and a shot-gun snapped and banged, and the crowd fell back in disorder.

Homer Tibbs had a hat blown away, full of buck-shot holes, while Mr.Watts solicitously examined a small aperture in the skirts of his brown coat.

The house commanded the road, and the rush of the mob into the village was checked, but only for the instant.
A rickety woodshed, which formed a portion of the Skillett mansion, closely joined the "Last Chance" side of the family place of business.
Scarcely had the guns of the defenders sounded, when, with a loud shout, Lige Willetts leaped from an upper window on that side of the burning saloon and landed on the woodshed, and, immediately climbing the roof of the house itself, applied a fiery brand to the time-worn clapboards.
Ross Schofield dropped on the shed, close behind him, his arm lovingly enfolding a gallon jug of whiskey, which he emptied (not without evident regret) upon the clapboards as Lige fired them.

Flames burst forth almost instantly, and the smoke, uniting with that now rolling out of every window of the saloon, went up to heaven in a cumbrous, gray column.
As the flames began to spread, there was a rapid fusillade from the rear of the house, and a hundred men and more, who had kept on through the fields to the north, assailed it from behind.