angonells, until we got so used to the sound of them,
that by the third week the veriest coward among the maidens would go
boldly up and wipe the dust away where a stone had been chipped, or
another displaced, as calmly as our lady herself had done on that first
terrible morning.

Their archers did little harm, for our men were so few, and our places
of shelter so many, that they ran small risk of being hurt, and although
one or two poor fellows were killed, and half a dozen more had wounds,
it was nothing to be compared with the loss which the English suffered,
for our archers had the whole army to take aim at, and I wot their
shafts flew sure.

In vain they brought battering-rams and tried to batter down the doors.
Our portcullis had resisted many an onslaught, and the gates behind it
were made of oak a foot thick, and studded all over with iron nails, and
they might as well have thought to batter down the Bass Rock itself.

So, in spite of all, as the weeks went by, we began to feel fairly safe
and comfortable, although my lady never relaxed her vigilance, and went
her round of the walls, early and late. At Walter's request she began to
wear a morion on her head, and a breast-plate of fine steel, to protect
her against any stray arrow, and in them, to my mind, she looked bonnier
than ever. In good sooth, I think the very English soldiers loved her,
not to speak of our own men; for whenever she appeared they would raise
their caps as if in homage, and hum a couplet which ran in some wise
thus--

"Come I early, come I late,
I find Annot at the gate,"

as if they would praise her for her tireless watchfulness. One day, Earl
Montague himself, moved to admiration by the manner in which Walter
Brand had sent his shaft through the heart of an English knight, cried
out in the hearing of all his army, "There comes one of my lady's
tire-pins; Agnace's love-shafts go straight to the heart." At which
words all our men broke into a mighty shout, and cheered, and cheered
again, till the walls rang, and the echoes floated back from far out
over the sea.

In spite of their admiration at our lady's bravery, however, the English
were determined to conquer the Castle, and after a time, when they saw
that their battering-rams and mangonells availed little, they bethought
them of a more dangerous weapon of warfare.

It was somewhere towards the end of February, when one fine day a mighty
sound of hammering arose from the