de
no answer, and as they passed through the doorway, a bullet from an
arquebus struck its woodwork.

The shot tower stood upon oaken piles, and the chamber above, which was
round, and about twenty feet in diameter, was reached by a broad ladder
of fifteen steps, such as is often used in stables. This ladder ended
in a little landing of about six feet square, and to the left of the
landing opened the door of the chamber where the shot were cast. They
went up into the place.

"What shall we do now?" said Foy, "barricade the door?"

"I can see no use in that," answered Martin, "for then they would batter
it down, or perhaps burn a way through it. No; let us take it off its
hinges and lay it on blocks about eight inches high, so that they may
catch their shins against it when they try to rush us."

"A good notion," said Foy, and they lifted off the narrow oaken door and
propped it up on four moulds of metal across the threshold, weighting
it with other moulds. Also they strewed the floor of the landing with
three-pound shot, so that men in a hurry might step on them and fall.
Another thing they did, and this was Foy's notion. At the end of the
chamber were the iron baths in which the lead was melted, and beneath
them furnaces ready laid for the next day's founding. These Foy set
alight, pulling out the dampers to make them burn quickly, and so melt
the leaden bars which lay in the troughs.

"They may come underneath," he said, pointing to the trap through which
the hot shot were dropped into the tank, "and then molten lead will be
useful."

Martin smiled and nodded. Then he took down a crossbow from the walls,
for in those days, when every dwelling and warehouse might have to
be used as a place of defence, it was common to keep a good store of
weapons hung somewhere ready to hand, and went to the narrow window
which overlooked the gate.

"As I thought," he said. "They can't get in and don't like the look of
the iron spikes, so they are fetching a smith to burst it open. We must
wait."

Very soon Foy began to fidget, for this waiting to be butchered by an
overwhelming force told upon his nerves. He thought of Elsa and his
parents, whom he would never see again; he thought of death and all the
terrors and wonders that might lie beyond it; death whose depths he must
so soon explore. He had looked to his crossbow, had tested the string
and laid a good store of quarrels on the floor beside him; he had taken
a pike fr