At the moment loud explosions and smoke and cries filled the echoing
place, as a volley of firearms burst from the landing, sweeping the line
of the windows and raking the hall. The band on the floor below stopped,
and some were down, groaning and cursing.

"They're armed; it's treachery," a voice, in panic, cried, and the
cowardly assailants ran to places of refuge, some crawling out at the
portal, some dropping from the windows, and others getting behind the
stairway, out of fire, and seeking desperately to draw the bolts of the
smaller door there.

"Patty Cannon has come!" Van Dorn repeated, throwing himself into the
body of the defenders, who, terrified at his bravery, began to retreat
upward around the angles of the stairs.

One man, however, did not retreat, neither did he strike, but wrapped
Van Dorn around the body in a pair of long and powerful arms, and lifted
him from the landing by main strength, saying:

"High doings, friend! I'm concerned for thee."

Van Dorn felt at the grip that he was overcome. He tried to reach for
his knife, but his arms were enclosed in the unknown stranger's, who,
having seized him from behind, sought to push him through the square
window on the landing into the grass yard below, where the rain was
falling and the lightning making brilliant play among the herbs and
ferns.

As the kidnapper prepared himself to fall, with all his joints and
muscles relaxed, the boy, Owen Daw, lying bloodthirstily along the limb
of the old tulip-tree, aimed his musket, according to Van Dorn's
instructions, at the forms contending there, and greedily pulled the
trigger.

The Quaker's arms, as they enclosed Van Dorn, presented, upon the cuff
of his coat, a large steel or metal button, and the ball from the tree,
striking this, glanced, and entered Van Dorn's throat.

"_Ayme Guay!_" Van Dorn muttered, and was thrown out of the window to
the earth, all limp and huddled together, till John Sorden bore him off,
muttering,

"I loved him as I never loved A male."

The desperate party beneath the stairs at last broke open the back door
there and rushed forth, only to receive handfuls of red pepper dust
thrown by Miles Tindel, as he cried,

"Tackle 'em, Cap'n Van!"

They screamed with anguish, and rolled in the wet grass, and yet, with
fears stronger than pain, sought the road in blindness, and some way to
leave the town.

Young Owen O'Day, or Daw, crept down the tree, and, seeing Van Dorn in