be induced to eat a bit of Florrie, though indeed
she was very good and sweet, because forsooth she had been used to milk
her and give her handfuls of fresh grass. Since then she had never
forgiven Boyd Connoway, and had never been able to look upon a gun with
any complaisance.

Yet when I told her to stand back and keep away from the powder horn and
the lantern (for it is none of the easiest to charge strange pieces in a
dark cellar) she said that she would stand by "King George" while I was
at hand--yes, and fire him off, too, if need were. Only I must show her
how to pull the trigger, and also adjust the muzzle so as to bear on the
steps by which the villains would come up!

This I relate to show how (for the time being) Agnes Anne was worked
upon. For, as all have seen, she was naturally of a very timorsome and
quavering disposition. At any rate I did get the muskets, all five of
them, loaded, and set in position with their noses cocked over the
squared bulwarks of Mechlin and Vallenceens, of Strasburg yarn, and
Italian silver-gilt wire.

And I can tell you they looked imposing in the light of the lantern,
though I was more than a little doubtful about some of them going off
without blowing themselves up. But it was no time to cavil about small
matters like that, and I said nothing about this to Agnes Anne, who, for
her part, continued to glance along the barrel of "King George" at the
stone door with the fixity of my father viewing a star through his large
brass spy-glass. Only Agnes Anne, being unable to keep one eye shut and
the other open, had to hold the lid of the unoccupied organ hard down
with her left hand, as if it too were about to bounce out on us like the
two men she had seen in the ice-house mound by the edge of the sunk
fence.

We waited a good while with the light of the lamp smothered--all, that
is, but barely sufficient to give air to the flame. And I tell you our
hearts were gigotting rarely. Even Agnes Anne had taken a sudden liking
to "King George," and would not let him go as I proposed to her, now
that all the other muskets were loaded and ready.

"You would do better service with the lantern," I told her, "you could
hold it up to let us see them better."

But she answered that the lantern could take care of itself. She was
going to do some of the real fighting, and so I should not scorn her any
more. But I knew very well that it was only a kind of hysteria and would
all go off at the