er, and other portable articles on their heads. The
Imperialists, seeing the movement up the steep road to the castle gate,
opened fire with their arquebuses, but the defenders of the wall replied
so hotly that they were forced to retire out of range. The cannon played
steadily all day, and by nightfall two breaches had been effected in the
wall and the gate had been battered down.

But by this time an ample store of provisions had been collected in the
castle and as the Imperialists were seen to form up for the assault the
trumpet was sounded, and at the signal the whole of the defenders of the
walls left their posts and fell back to the castle, leaving the deserted
town at the mercy of the enemy. The Imperialists raised a shout of
triumph as they entered the breaches and found them undefended, and
when once assured that the town was deserted they broke their ranks and
scattered to plunder.

It was now quite dark, and many of them dragging articles of furniture
into the streets made great bonfires to light them at their work
of plunder. But they had soon reason to repent having done so, for
immediately the flames sprang up and lighted the streets, flashes ran
round the battlements of the castle, and a heavy fire was opened into
the streets, killing many of the soldiers. Seeing the danger of thus
exposing the men to the fire from the castle, the Imperialist commander
issued orders at once that all fires should be extinguished, that anyone
setting fire to a house should be instantly hung, and that no lights
were to be lit in the houses whose windows faced the castle.

Foreseeing the possibility of an attack from the castle, the Austrians
placed a hundred men at the foot of the road leading up to it, and laid
their three cannon loaded to the muzzle to command it.

"Have you not," Malcolm asked the count, "some means of exit from the
castle besides the way into the town?"

"Yes," the count said, "there is a footpath down the rock on the other
side."

"Then," Malcolm said, "as soon as they are fairly drunk, which will be
before midnight, let us fall upon them from the other side. Leave fifty
of your oldest men with half a dozen veteran soldiers to defend the
gateway against a sudden attack; with the rest we can issue out, and
marching round, enter by the gate and breaches, sweeping the streets as
we go, and then uniting, burst through any guard they may have placed to
prevent a sortie, and so regain the castle."

Th