marched from the square. By narrow streets went they, 'neath dim-lighted
casements where pale faces looked down to pray heaven's aid on
them.

So came they where torch and lanthorn smoked and gleamed, by whose
fitful light they beheld a barricade, rough and hastily contrived,
whence Sir Benedict fought and Walkyn smote, with divers of their stout
company and lusty fellows from the town. Above, upon the great flanking
tower of the gate, was Giles with many archers who plied their whizzing
shafts amain where, 'twixt outer and inner wall, the assailants sought
to storm the barricade; but the place was narrow, and moreover, beyond
the breach stout Eric, backed by his fierce townsmen, fought in
desperate battle: thus, though the besiegers' ranks were constantly
swelled by way of the breach, yet in that confined space their very
numbers hampered them, while from sheltered wall and gate-tower Giles
and his archers showered them with whistling shafts very fast and
furious; so in that narrow place death was rife and in the fitful
torch-glare was a sea of tossing steel and faces fierce and wild, and
ever the clamour grew, shouts and screams and cries dreadful to be
heard.

Now as Beltane stood to watch this, grim-lipped, for it needed but few
to man the barricade, so narrow was it, Roger caught his arm and
pointed to the housetops above them; and what he saw, others saw also,
and a cry went up of wonder and amaze. For, high upon the roof, his
mail agleam, his white robe whiter in the torch-glare, stood Friar
Martin, while crouched behind him to left and right were many men in
ancient and rusty armour, men grey-bearded and white of head, at sight
of whom the roar of battle died down from sheer amaze until all men
might hear the friar's words:

"Come, ye men of Belsaye!" he cried, "all ye that do love wife or
daughter or little child--all ye that would maintain them innocent and
pure--follow me!"

As he ended, his sword flashed, and, even as he sprang, so sprang all
those behind him--down, down they leapt upon the close-ranked foemen
below, so swift, so sudden and unexpected, that ere they could be met
with pike or sword the thing was done. And now from that narrow way,
dim-lit by lanthorn and torch-glare, there rose a sound more awful to
hear than roar of battle, a hoarse and vicious sound like to the
worrying snarl of many great and fierce hounds.

With ancient swords, with axe and dagger and fierce-rending teeth they
fo