nt, and the next minute he
reached the door of the lower hall, which formed the men's
prison-chamber.

The sentries were gone, and he thrust back the bolts and turned the
ponderous key.

"Ben! Corporal! Donny! All of you--quick!"

"Ay, ay, sir. You're only just in time, for we're most smothered. What
does it all mean?"

"Don't talk! Follow me--guard-room. Enemy all in the court."

He led the way back, the men literally staggering after him, half
suffocated as they had been by the fumes of the powder, the explosion
having been so near their prison. But they revived moment by moment in
the pure air, and growing excited by the sounds that reached them from
the court-yard, they followed on along the lower passages till they
reached the crypt of the south-west tower, passed on to the stairway at
the base of the gate tower, and ascended unchallenged to the great
gate-way, where Roy dashed into the untenanted guard-room, and the men
rapidly armed themselves with weapons from the racks.

"Ready?" said Roy, in a whisper.

"Yes," came in a deep, excited growl.

"Back, then," cried Roy, "and we'll attack them in the rear."

He ranged his men in the shadow, the combatants being wildly engaged
amid a blaze of light, which prevented the movements of Roy's little
party being seen; and he was about to lead them back through the great
corridor to where they could dash out suddenly and make their diversion
in the rear, when Ben suddenly laid his hand upon the boy's arm, and ran
to one of the narrow slits of windows in the guard-room.

"Trampling of horses," he whispered, as he peered out, the glow upward
now lighting the other side of the moat. "General's men coming back,
sir. Take us up into the portcullis-room, and we must defend that and
keep it and the furnace-chamber to the death. They must not come in."

Roy grasped the position, knowing well enough that as soon as the
defenders knew of the return of their friends, they would admit them,
and the Cavaliers would suffer defeat.

Giving the word, he dashed up the spiral followed by his men, and as
they stood ready to defend the place to the last, and keep bridge and
portcullis as they were, he stepped up into the window and thrust out
his head, to see dimly a body of about fifty horsemen, who galloped up
to the edge of the moat.

"Halt!" shouted their leader. "No good: impossible. We must ride
round, dismount, and join Royland through the breach. Forward!