look through.
But when I started up behind them, they all took to flight in terror."

"Look there," said Fink; "they are amusing themselves in making small
barricades. As long as this evening light allows us to see, the danger
is not great. But in the night, those huts on wheels may come a little
too near."

"The sky keeps clear," said Anton; "there will be a bright starlight."

"If I only knew," said Fink, "why they have had the madness to attack
the strongest side of our fortress! It can only be that your peaceful
visage has had the effect of the Gorgon's head upon them. Henceforth you
will be described as a scarecrow in all Slavonic fights."

It was dark when the hammering away at the carts ceased. A word of
command was heard. The officers summoned a few men by name to the poles,
and six movable roofs rolled on rapidly to about thirty yards from the
front of the castle.

"Now for it," cried Fink. "Remain here and look to the lower story." He
sprang up the steps; the long row of front rooms was opened; one could
see from one end of the house to the other. "Mind your heads," cried he
to the sentinels. Immediately came an irregular fire against the windows
of the upper story, the leaden shower rattling through the panes, the
glass clattering on the floor. Fink took out his whistle; a shrill sound
vibrated loudly through the house, and was responded to by the salvos of
the besieged from both stories and from the tower.

And now followed an irregular fire from both sides. The besieged had the
advantage--their aim was truer, and they were better concealed than
those without.

During the brief pauses, Fink's voice was to be heard crying, "Steady,
men; keep close." He was every where; his light step, the clear tones of
his voice, his wild jests from time to time, kept up the spirits of all.
They filled Lenore's soul with a thrill of rapture; she hardly felt the
full terrors of her situation; nor did the convulsive starts of her
father, nor her mother's low groans, lead her to despair, for the words
of the man she loved sounded like a message of salvation in her ear.

For about an hour the battle raged around the walls. The great building
rose dark in the pale starlight; no light, no form was to be seen from
without; only the flashes that from time to time shone out from a corner
of the windows announced to those outside that there was life within. He
who walked through the rooms could discover a dark shape here and t