e a single ladder could be placed,
our great blocks of rock went crashing down on them, hurling the top men
in all directions, and driving in the wooden roofs on those who were
inside.

Woe's me! Although they were our enemies, our hearts melted at the
sight. The timbers of the sows cracked and fell in, and we could see
nought but a mass of mangled, bleeding wretches. Had it not been that my
lady feared treachery, and that she had sworn not to open the gates
except to her husband, I ween she would fain have taken us all out to
succour them.

As it was, we could only watch and pity, and keep the bairns in the
chambers that looked on the sea, so that their young eyes should not
gaze on so ghastly a scene.

And when night fell, and there was no light to guide our archers to
shoot, though I trust that, in any case, mercy would have kept them from
it, the English stole across the causeway, and pulled away the broken
beams, and carried off the dead and wounded, and burned what remained of
the sows.

After that day we had no more trouble from any attempts to storm the
Castle.

But what force cannot do, hunger may. So my Lord of Salisbury, still
sitting in front of our gates with his army, in order to prevent help
reaching us from the land, set about starving us into submission. As yet
we had had no need to trouble about food, for, as I have said, we had a
store of grain, enough to last for some weeks yet, in the dungeon, and,
long ere it was done, we looked for help reaching us by the sea, if it
could not reach us by land.

It was soon made plain to us, however, that not only my Lord of
Salisbury, but his royal master, King Edward, was determined that the
"Key of Scotland" should fall into his hand, for one fine March morning
a great fleet of ships came sailing round St Abb's Head, and took up
their station betwixt us and the Bass Rock, and then we were left,
without hope of succour, until our stock of provisions should be eaten
up, and starvation forced us to give in.

Ah me! but it was weary work, living through the ever-lengthening days
of that cold bleak springtime, waiting for the help which never came,
which never could come, so it seemed to us, with that army watching us
from the land, and that fleet of ships girding us in on the sea.

And all the time our store of food sank lower and lower, and the
wenches' faces grew white, and the men pulled their belts tighter round
their middles, and poor little Mistress