mself on being particularly expert), and
the wife seized the spit from the fireplace, and held it as she saw the
baron hold his spear. The storm of wind and rain continued to beat on
the roof and the casement, and the storm of blows to resound upon the
door, which at length gave way with a violent crash, and a cluster of
armed men appeared without, seemingly not less than twelve. Behind
them rolled the stream now changed from a gentle and shallow river to a
mighty and impetuous torrent, roaring in waves of yellow foam, partially
reddened by the light that streamed through the open door, and turning
up its convulsed surface in flashes of shifting radiance from restless
masses of half-visible shadow. The stepping-stones, by which the
intruders must have crossed, were buried under the waters. On the
opposite bank the light fell on the stems and boughs of the rock-rooted
oak and ash tossing and swaying in the blast, and sweeping the flashing
spray with their leaves.

The instant the door broke, Robin and Marian loosed their arrows.
Robin's arrow struck one of the assailants in the juncture of the
shoulder, and disabled his right arm: Marian's struck a second in the
juncture of the knee, and rendered him unserviceable; for the night.
The baron's long spear struck on the mailed breastplate of a third, and
being stretched to its full extent by the long-armed hero, drove him to
the edge of the torrent, and plunged him into its eddies, along which he
was whirled down the darkness of the descending stream, calling vainly
on his comrades for aid, till his voice was lost in the mingled roar of
the waters and the wind. A fourth springing through the door was laid
prostrate by the cottager's cudgel: but the wife being less dexterous
than her company, though an Amazon in strength, missed her pass at a
fifth, and drove the point of the spit several inches into the right
hand door-post as she stood close to the left, and thus made a new
barrier which the invaders could not pass without dipping under it and
submitting their necks to the sword: but one of the assailants seizing
it with gigantic rage, shook it at once from the grasp of its holder
and from its lodgment in the post, and at the same time made good the
irruption of the rest of his party into the cottage.

Now raged an unequal combat, for the assailants fell two to one on
Robin, Marian, the baron, and the cottager; while the wife, being
deprived of her spit, converted every th