ocks going there is Sammy in the heart of it. But who are
these ill-faced rogues who block the path? To your kennels, canaille!
What! you dare look us in the eyes? Out swords, lads, and give them the
flat of them! Waste not your shafts upon such runagate knaves."

There was little fight left in the peasants, however, still dazed by the
explosion, amazed at their own losses and disheartened by the arrival of
the disciplined archers. In a very few minutes they were in full flight
for their brushwood homes, leaving the morning sun to rise upon a
blackened and blood-stained ruin, where it had left the night before the
magnificent castle of the Seneschal of Auvergne. Already the white lines
in the east were deepening into pink as the archers gathered round the
keep and took counsel how to rescue the survivors.

"Had we a rope," said Alleyne, "there is one side which is not yet on
fire, down which we might slip."

"But how to get a rope?"

"It is an old trick," quoth Aylward. "Hola! Johnston, cast me up a rope,
even as you did at Maupertuis in the war time."

The grizzled archer thus addressed took several lengths of rope from his
comrades, and knotting them firmly together, he stretched them out in
the long shadow which the rising sun threw from the frowning keep. Then
he fixed the yew-stave of his bow upon end and measured the long, thin,
black line which it threw upon the turf.

"A six-foot stave throws a twelve-foot shadow," he muttered. "The keep
throws a shadow of sixty paces. Thirty paces of rope will be enow and to
spare. Another strand, Watkin! Now pull at the end that all may be safe.
So! It is ready for them.'

"But how are they to reach it?" asked the young archer beside him.

"Watch and see, young fool's-head," growled the old bowman. He took a
long string from his pouch and fastened one end to an arrow.

"All ready, Samkin?"

"Ready, camarade."

"Close to your hand then." With an easy pull he sent the shaft
flickering gently up, falling upon the stonework within a foot of where
Aylward was standing. The other end was secured to the rope, so that in
a minute a good strong cord was dangling from the only sound side of the
blazing and shattered tower. The Lady Tiphaine was lowered with a noose
drawn fast under the arms, and the other five slid swiftly down, amid
the cheers and joyous outcry of their rescuers.

CHAPTER XXXII. HOW THE COMPANY TOOK COUNSEL ROUND THE FALLEN TREE.

"Where is Sir Cla