to the
wall above and lowered them behind the drawbridge, where five or six men
stowed them away. As soon as it became dark torches were lighted, and by
ten o'clock a solid mass of sacks filled with earth were packed in the
space between the portcullis and the drawbridge.

The night passed off quietly, the horses and carts remaining beyond the
fosse. Planks had been placed across one end of this, and the horses and
carts taken over. The horses were picketed round the castle, a supply
of forage being placed there for their use, while the carts were packed
closely by the fosse, so as to form an obstacle to any of the assailants
who might try to pass. At daybreak they were again run across the
planks, the horses brought round and harnessed, the scouts being sent
out as on the day before. All day the work went on, and by nightfall
two walls twenty feet long and eight feet high, bristling with pointed
staves, were erected. They stood some twenty feet back from the edge of
the fosse, and extended from the wall to the verge of the precipice. The
carts and horses had, before the walls were built, been taken round
to the back of the castle, where the plateau extended some fifty yards
beyond the defences. Evening was just coming on when the boys came in,
two of them bringing a report that a great crowd of men could be seen
approaching from the west.

MacIntosh, with thirty men, were at once lowered down from the
battlements, and took up their places in an intrenchment which had been
during the day thrown up at the point where the road came up to the
plateau, while a score of the tenants assembled at the edge of the
cliff, where great piles of blocks of stone had been collected in
readiness to throw down. Lighted torches were placed at intervals along
the road, and three or four great cressets, holding balls of tow soaked
in turpentine and oil, were set up on the edge of the plateau; these
were to be lighted when the peasants attempted to mount the hill.

An hour passed, and then a flame sprang up from a house and outbuildings
in the valley, lighting up the ground around and showing that a great
crowd was gathered on the road there.

"How many should you say there were, MacIntosh?"

"I should put them at four or five thousand."

"Yes, they are certainly not short of four thousand. What wild looking
figures! They are just the same in appearance as those who attacked
Madame de Blenfoix's chateau. See, they are lighting torche