ed attentively, they found that the horses were halted, and
the guns drawn right in front of the castle gate, but at the distance of
quite half a mile. There the men seemed to be bivouacking; and the
smoke of several fires rose slowly in the air.

No more time was lost: the gunners were summoned, ropes got ready, some
heavy beams were hoisted up to the platform of the gate tower, and,
under the guidance of Ben and the corporal, a rough kind of crane was
fitted up; and after the guns had been dismounted, the carriages were
hoisted and placed in position behind the embrasures.

The heavier task was to come; but Ben and the three troopers seemed to
master every difficulty, carefully securing the guns with ingenious
knots of the ropes; and at last the word was given to hoist.

The hemp stretched and strained, and as the first gun rose a little from
the ground, it seemed to Roy as if the strands must give way, and he
ordered every one to stand well aside. Ben smiled.

"No fear of that, sir," he whispered. "Those are the toughest of hemp,
those ropes, and as the length gets shorter, the strain grows less.
Steady, my lads! a little at a time."

The hauling went on till the first gun was level with the top of the
battlements, when there was a clever bit of management with a big wooden
bar or two handled by the troopers on the roof, and the first gun was
easily dropped right upon its carriage.

"One," said Roy, with a sigh of relief, for he was in constant dread of
an accident.

"Ay, sir; and it will be two directly; and I wish it was three for the
enemy's sake."

The second gun was hoisted, and mounted rapidly, thanks to the trained
skill of the four regular soldiers; while the men from the mill who
helped looked on with profound admiration, though they were pretty
clever at moving stones.

Discipline was relaxed over this manual labour, with the consequence
that Sam Donny's tongue began to run rather freely, a certain intimacy
having existed in the past between Roy and the miller's man connected
with the demand and supply of meal-worms for catching and feeding
nightingales, which came about as far west as the castle and no farther.

"Beat us chaps to 'a done that, Master Roy," he said.

"Captain Roy," growled Ben.

"Ay. Forgetted," said the man. "T'other seems so nat'ral. Beat us
chaps, Captain Roy. We'm as strong as them, but they've got a way a
handling they brass guns as seems to come nat'ral to 'em lik