leg, with attachment of tattered hose hanging here and there, followed.

Before the pistol could go off, Boris meanwhile waiting shrewdly for the
appearance of a more vital part, a voice cried, "Stop!"

I looked about me, and there was the Lady Ysolinde come out of her
chamber, with a dagger in her hand. She was looking upward at the hole in
the ceiling.

"For God's sake, do not fire!" she cried; "tis only my poor Lubber Fiend.
Shame on me, that I had quite forgotten him all this time!"

At which, without turning away the muzzle, Boris put it a little aside,
and waited for the disturber of brick-dust ceilings to reveal himself.
Which, when presently he did, a huge, grinning face appeared, pushing
forward at first slowly and with difficulty, then, as soon as the ears
had crossed the narrows of the pass, the whole head to the neck was
glaring down and grinning to us.

"Lubber Jan," said Ysolinde, "what do you up there?"

The head only grinned and waggled pleasantly, as it had been through a
horse-collar at Dantzig fair.

"Speak!" said she, and stamped her little foot; "I will shake thee with
terrors else, monster!"

"Poor Jan came down from above. It is quite easy!" he said. "But not for
horses. Oh no! but now I will go and bring the Burgomeister. Do you keep
the castle while I go. He bides below the town in a great house of stone,
and entertains our Prince Miller's Son's archers. I will bring all that
are sober of them."

"God help us then!" quoth Jorian; "it is past eleven o' the clock, and
as I know them man by man, there will not be so much as one left able to
prop up another by this time!"

"Aha!" cried the head above; "you say that because you know the archers.
But I say I shall bring full twenty of them--because I know the strength
of the Burgomeister's ale. Hold the place for half an hour and twenty
right sober men shall ye have."

And with that the Lubber Fiend disappeared in a final avalanche of
brick-dust and clay clods.

He was gone, and half an hour was a long time to wait. Yet in such a
case there was nothing for it but to stand it out. So I besought the
maids to retire again to their inner chamber, into which, at least,
neither bullets nor arrows could penetrate. This, after some little
persuasion, they did.

We waited. I have since that night fought many easier battles, and
bloody battles, too. Now and then a face would look in momentarily from
the great outer door and vanish before any on