Without was silence and stillness, as of the grave, and it was nipping cold, but my mind was happily busy, having so many delicious moments to live over again. If by some unhappy chance I never saw her again and lived to be a hundred, I should never tire of my memories. She had as many facets as Mr. Pitt's diamond, as many tones as the great organ in Lichfield Cathedral. To know her had enriched my life and opened my mind.

What Propertius had said of his Cynthia, I repeated to myself of my Margaret, _Ingenium n.o.bis ipsa puella est_. 'My' Margaret! Well, it did her no harm for me to think it, and, after all, the sly, silly babblings of my under-self could be shouted down by the stern voice of common sense.

Here, under the stress of a new force, my thoughts flew off at a tangent, and I said to myself, "Bravo, Romeo! You shall find me a rare Juliet."

I had, indeed, much ado to keep from laughing aloud, as my situation was delicious, not to say delicate. For, on a sudden, noiselessly as the beat of a bat's wing, two feet of ladder had shot up above the eaves, and even now an ardent lover was hasting aloft, dreaming of lispings and kissings to come. I mustn't frighten him too soon or too much or he'd drop off, but as soon as he was fairly on the slope he should sip the sweetness of lips of steel. So I crept back, got a pistol, and stood to the left of the window.

I waited till his body darkened the room and then took a furtive look at him. It was no village lover climbing up at peep of dawn to greet his la.s.s. It was one of Brocton's dragoons, one of the five who had been at the Hanyards.

In a twink I shot him. Without a word, he slithered down the tiles, leaving a mush of blood-red snow. His right leg slipped aslant between two rungs of the ladder, and his body, checked in its fall, swung round and dangled over the eaves.

In the room was a large oaken clothes chest. I dragged it to the light, tilted it on end, and jammed it into the gable of the window, which, luckily, it fitted completely, and so blocked any further attack from the roof. s.n.a.t.c.hing up my weapons, I tumbled down the ladder, only to hear the heavy tramping of feet upstairs. Standing by Margaret's door, I waited until the head and shoulders of the first man came in sight. He carried a lantern, and its yellow rays lit up for me the ugly face of the sergeant of dragoons. I fired my second pistol at him, crashing the lantern to pieces. Down he went, whether hit or not I did not know. In the darkness I heard the rush of a second man who came on so fearlessly and fast that he was far into the pa.s.sage before I met him with a fierce thrust of my rapier. I thrilled with the zeal of old Smite-and-spare-not as, for the first time, I felt the point of my rapier in a man's body, and drove it home with a yell. Down he went too, with a gurgle of blood in his throat, and Margaret, coming out of her room, stumbled over his body as she raced after me along the pa.s.sage.

The Colonel was at the stair-head before me, but there was, for the moment, no work for him. The enemy had tumbled noisily downstairs into the hall, and were collecting their scattered wits after their first rout. To my regret, the raucous cursings of the sergeant showed that he had not been killed and apparently not even hit.

"G.o.d d.a.m.n ye!" he yelled. "Ten of you driven back like sheep by a raw youth. I'll settle with ye for it. Think I picked ye out of the stews and stink-holes of London to stand this? There isn't one of ye with the guts of a louse. I'll take the skin off the ribs of you for this, d.a.m.n ye, and most of your pimp's flesh along with it!"

"What sort of guts was it brought yow tumblin' down so quick?" put in the surly voice of the landlord. "Yow cudna 'a come any faster if yer blasted yed 'ad been blown to bits instead of my lantern."

Some of the men laughed at this, whereon the sergeant blasphemed enough to make a devil from h.e.l.l shiver. He cowed the dragoons, but the innkeeper only growled, "A three-bob lantern blown to bits! Fork out three bob!"

"I'll have him if I have to blow the house to bits!" vociferated the sergeant.

"Fork out three bob!" repeated the host.

Not a word had pa.s.sed between us on the stair-head, and now, at the sound of preparations for a fresh a.s.sault, the Colonel took each of us by the arm and led us into his room.

"The stair-head cannot be held against fire from the opposite landing,"

he whispered.

When inside, he locked the door, and I helped him pile the bed on end behind it, heaping all the other furniture against the bed-frame to hold the mattress and bedding up against the door. Margaret, at a brief word of command, had meanwhile kept watch through the window.

"That's a fair defence," he said contentedly. "What are these devils?"

"Brocton's dragoons," said I. "I've settled two of them, one on the roof and one in the pa.s.sage."

"Good lad! Ten of 'em would be long odds in the open; here we ought to have the laugh of them. Load your pistols! Damme, it's a bit chilly.

Fortunately there's some warm work ahead."

He stamped up and down the room, swishing his arms round his body, and stopping every now and again to make some trifling change in our hurriedly contrived barricade. Margaret stood by quietly at the window, and when I had reloaded my pistols, I joined her there.

The ladder had been shifted and now lay along in the snow. There, too, lay the body of the dragoon I had shot, crumpled up in his death-agony. A brood of owls were clucking and cluttering about under the hovel, and there, too, leaning against the rear wheel of the wain, were a lumpish wagoner and our surly host. The one was stolidly smoking, the other was holding the battered lantern out at arm's length, and I could, as it were, see him growling to the lout at his side, "'Ew's to fork out for this'n?"

A girl went towards them from the house, circling, with averted head, far round the dead dragoon, bearing them from the kitchen a smoking jug of ale.

"In England," said Margaret, "snow adds the charm of peace and purity to the countryside. There's never, I should think, enough of it to give the sense of utter desolation and deadness that it gives one in Russia."

"It's so uncertain with us," was my reply. "I've known a whole winter without a snowflake, and I've walked knee-deep in it in May."

The Colonel stopped his marching and swishing and came to the window.

"Don't bother, Madge," said he. "We'll pull through. Hallo, I didn't see yon wagon last night."

He took out his snuff-box and, hearing the noise of the enemy in the corridor, walked with it in his hand across to the door. He tapped his box with accustomed preciseness, but I, a step behind, having lingered for a last look into Margaret's eyes, heard him mutter, "d.a.m.n the wagon!"

"Ho, there within, in the King's name," shouted the sergeant.

"Ho, there without, in the devil's name," mimicked the Colonel.

"I want speech with Colonel Waynflete," shouted the sergeant.

"Then, seeing that Colonel Waynflete cannot at the moment give himself the pleasure of slitting your ruffian's throat, you may speak on," was the reply.

"You and your daughter may proceed on your way unharmed if you surrender.

It's only Wheatman the farmer, now with you, that I want."

He could be heard all over the room to the last syllable, and Margaret quickly left her place at the window and came towards us, but the Colonel in a stern whisper ordered her back. "How dare you leave your post! Watch that wagon!" She crimsoned and returned.

"If Master Freake were here, Oliver, I think he would remark that there was no market for colonels to-day," said her father to me with a wry smile. He gave the lid of his snuff-box a final tap, opened it, and held it out to me. In the sense of the term known to fashionable London, he was not a good-looking man, but as he stood there, waiting gravely while I took my pinch, he had the irresistible charm of the highest manliness.

"Do you agree, Colonel?" bawled the sergeant.

"I do not," he shouted, and took his snuff with great relish.

"By G.o.d," and now the sergeant roared like a wounded bull, "I'll have you all in ten minutes." Then, as an afterthought, he added, "Here, I say, you Wheatman, do you agree?"

"Certainly," said I, "I'll come at once." And I should have gone, there and then, but for the Colonel, who, as I laid a hand on the nearest piece of our barricade, promptly said, "I've only one way with deserters," and levelled a pistol at my head.

"For Margaret's sake, sir," I pleaded in low tones. "Let me go!" She had flown like a bird across to us, and so heard me.

"I had hoped you thought better of me, Master Wheatman," she said coldly, and went back to her watching.

The sergeant heard, or at least understood, what had been said in the room. We heard him say, "You know your job. Fifty guineas for Wheatman, dead or alive. Any man who touches the girl will be flogged bare to the bones." Then we heard him walk off along the corridor.

The dragoons without made no attempt on the door, and we joined Margaret at the window. Hardly had we got there when half a dozen dragoons dashed out of the porch and ran for the road. The Colonel flung the window open and emptied both his pistols at them, but they zigzagged like hares and the shots appeared to be thrown away. In the road they halted, formed a line in open order, and levelled their carbines at the window. All three of us moved aside, the Colonel tugging Margaret with him to the right while I hopped to the left.

"Take it easy, Oliver," he said very good-humouredly. "Until they think of the wagon we're safe enough on this side. These walls would almost stand up to a carronade."

With a clash the first bullet came through the window and knocked a huge splinter off a bedpost. There were six shots without, and six bullets spattered in a small area opposite.

"That's quite good shooting," said the Colonel. "Much better than I expected from such poor stuff."

I told him what Jack had said about the mixed quality of Brocton's dragoons. These good shots, I explained, were picked men off the Ridgeley estates, probably gamekeepers and bailiffs.

"Very like," he said. "They're used to shooting but not to fighting.

Rabbits are more in their line."

There was no stir in the pa.s.sage, and I wondered what the job was these men had in hand. The fusillade at the window was kept up unceasingly, generally in single shots, sometimes in twos and threes. The barricade took on a ragged appearance. I occupied my mind in thoughts of Margaret.

She was in the corner, beyond her father.

The bullets had by now nearly cleared the window of gla.s.s, fragments of which covered the floor of the room. Through the cracking and spluttering we at last heard the noise of a wagon moving. The Colonel and I leaped up and peered round the edge of the window. It was being pulled by two horses, and was shifted till it was exactly opposite the window, and to my surprise some twelve feet distant. The sacks made a firm platform level with the window-sill. Flush with the window it would have made an admirable means of attack, but why the s.p.a.ce between?