eat snow-drifts. And here
they were not to show themselves; but keep their culverin in the woods,
until their cousins of Devon appeared on the opposite parapet of the
glen.

The third culverin was entrusted to the fifteen troopers; who, with ten
picked soldiers from either trained hand, making in all five-and-thirty
men, were to assault the Doone-gate itself, while the outlaws were
placed between two fires from the eastern cliff and the western. And
with this force went Jeremy Stickles, and with it went myself, as
knowing more about the passage than any other stranger did. Therefore,
if I have put it clearly, as I strive to do, you will see that the
Doones must repulse at once three simultaneous attacks, from an army
numbering in the whole one hundred and thirty-five men, not including
the Devonshire officers; fifty men on each side, I mean, and thirty-five
at the head of the valley.

The tactics of this grand campaign appeared to me so clever, and
beautifully ordered, that I commended Colonel Stickles, as everybody
now called him, for his great ability and mastery of the art of war. He
admitted that he deserved high praise; but said that he was not by any
means equally certain of success, so large a proportion of his forces
being only a raw militia, brave enough no doubt for anything, when they
saw their way to it; but knowing little of gunnery, and wholly unused
to be shot at. Whereas all the Doones were practised marksmen, being
compelled when lads (like the Balearic slingers) to strike down their
meals before tasting them. And then Colonel Stickles asked me, whether I
myself could stand fire; he knew that I was not a coward, but this was
a different question. I told him that I had been shot at, once or twice
before; but nevertheless disliked it, as much as almost anything. Upon
that he said that I would do; for that when a man got over the first
blush of diffidence, he soon began to look upon it as a puff of destiny.

I wish I could only tell what happened, in the battle of that day,
especially as nearly all the people round these parts, who never saw
gun-fire in it, have gotten the tale so much amiss; and some of them
will even stand in front of my own hearth, and contradict me to the
teeth; although at the time they were not born, nor their fathers put
into breeches. But in truth, I cannot tell, exactly, even the part in
which I helped, how then can I be expected, time by time, to lay before
you, all the little