A Gentleman Player Part 27

Leaving the wounded to rely solely upon repose, the men set about doing as they were ordered. Marryott and Kit took account of the weapons and ammunition. There were, besides the swords and daggers, a number of pistols, two arquebuses, a musket, and a petronel. Of these firearms, the pistols alone had wheel-locks, which indeed were still so costly that as yet they were to be found mainly in weapons for use on horseback, the longer arms, for service afoot, being fitted with the awkward and slow-working match-locks. There was good store of ammunition.[29]

Marryott and the captain thereupon threw off their doublets, and began barricading, starting at the main door, and using first the chests, trestles, and like material found in the adjacent rooms. When the long and thin pieces of timber began to come in upon the shoulders of the men, Hal caused them to be pointed at one end, that they might be used as braces, the blunt ends placed against doors and shutters, the sharp ends sunk into notches made in the floor. Pieces of various size and shape were utilized to bar, brace, or block up doors and windows in diverse ways. Narrow openings were left at some windows, through which, upon making corresponding openings in the gla.s.s, men might fire out at any one attempting to force entrance.

When the defences in the house were well begun. Hal sent Kit to superintend those of the stable, which, as has been shown, communicated directly with a wing of the mansion.

These occupations kept Marryott and his men busy for several hours. When they were completed, and Foxby Hall seemed closed tight against the ingress of a regiment, Hal, previously drained of strength by his long terms of sleeplessness, was ready to drop. But he dragged himself up-stairs to see how his prisoner fared.

Francis and Tom were asleep in the outer room. At Anne's half open door Marryott could hear from within the chamber the regular breathing of peaceful slumber. He went down to the hall again, and found the men, with the exception of Anthony, stretched upon the stale rushes. The Puritan was sitting by the fire.

"I shall sleep awhile, Anthony," said Hal. "I see no use in setting a watch, now that we need keep no more between us and these men than the walls of this house. If they come hither, their noise will wake us ere they can break in."

"Come hither they will, 'tis sure," said Kit Bottle, from his place on the floor, "if they be indeed Rumney's men or Barnet's. They will have heard tell of this empty house ere they come to it, and they will stop to examine. Or, if they pa.s.s first without stopping, and find no note of our going further north, they will come back with keen noses. When they hear horses snorting and pawing in the stables,--horses stabled at an empty house, look you!--they'll make quick work of smelling us out!"

"Well, 'faith, we are ready for them," said Hal, and sank to a reclining att.i.tude near the fire.

"Ay, in good sooth," said Kit; "fortified, armed, and vict--No, by the devil's horns, victualled we are not!"

And the worthy soldier sprang to his feet, the picture of dismay.

"Go to!" cried Hal, rising almost as quickly. "Where are the provisions Anthony brought yestreen?"

"In those bellies and mine, and a murrain on such appet.i.tes!" was Kit's self-reproachful answer. "G.o.d's death, we're like to make up for a deal of Lent-breaking, these next two days!"

Hal became at once hungry, at the very prospect of a two days' complete fast. He wondered how his men would endure it; and he thought of the lady up-stairs. Already languishing from sheer fatigue, must she now famish also?

"We must get a supply of food!" said Marryott, decidedly.

"Where?" queried the captain.

"Where we got yesterday's. Some one must go, at once!"

"I will go," said Anthony. "I know the way."

"Rouse the innkeeper, at any cost," replied Hal, handing out a gold piece from the pocket of his hose.

"'Tis near dawn," returned the Puritan. "He will be up when I arrive there."

"Keep an eye open for our enemies."

"If I find them surrounding you, when I return," replied the Puritan, calmly, "I will make a dash for one of the doors. By watching from an upper window, you may know when to open it for me."

"And when you are within, it can be barred again," said Hal. "Best make for the same door by which you now go forth; 'twill save undoing more than one of our barricades."

"Let it be the lesser stable door, then," suggested Captain Bottle, "as he will go by horse. Moreover, if the enemy should force a way into the stables, there's yet the door betwixt the stables and the house, that we could close against them."

The world was paling into a snowy dawn, as Anthony rode forth from the stable a few minutes later. Meanwhile, having aroused the useful Bunch, Hal had caused vessels to be filled with water from a well, and placed in a room off the hall. Kit then barred the stable door, but did not replace the braces and obstructions that had been removed to allow egress. He then volunteered to watch, in an up-stairs chamber of the kitchen wing, for Anthony's return. a.s.senting to this offer, Marryott returned to the hall, and lay down near Oliver, who was already asleep.

An hour later Hal was awakened by a call from Captain Bottle, who stood at the head of the stairs.

"Is Anthony coming back?" Marryott asked, scrambling to his feet.

"He is not in sight yet," was the reply. "And you'd best send Oliver to watch in my place. I can be of better use otherwise, now."

"What mean'st thou?"

"The hors.e.m.e.n are without. From yon room I saw them riding around the house and staring up at the windows."

"Which party is it?" said Hal, quickly, repressing his excitement.

"Rumney's."

Hal's brow darkened a little. He would rather it had been Barnet's, for then he should have been free of all doubt whether the pursuivant had indeed clung to the false chase.

At that instant a loud thud was heard on the front door, as if a piece of timber were being used as a battering-ram.

"You are right; I will send Oliver to watch," said Marryott.

He did so, with full instructions; and then roused all the able-bodied men. He distributed the firearms and ammunition; a.s.signed each man to the guardianship of some particular door and its neighboring windows; gave orders for an alarm, and a concentration of force, at any point where the enemy might win entrance; left Kit in charge of the hall, at whose door there was present threat of attack, and hastened up-stairs to a gallery where an oriel window projected over that door. He looked down into the quadrangle. It was now broad daylight; snow was still falling.

Whether from a desire to avail himself of the bad weather for an attempt to plunder this deserted house, or from a suspicion that Oliver Bunch might have been both able and willing to open the mansion to the travellers, or from other reasons for thinking that they might be here, Captain Rumney had indeed led his troop into the grounds, made a preliminary circuit of the mansion, heard the horses in the stables, found all doors fast, detected signs of barricades in the windows, dismounted his company in the court, and caused a number of his men to a.s.sault the door with the fallen bough of a tree.

CHAPTER XIX.

THE HORs.e.m.e.n DEPART.

"Beauty provoketh thieves sooner than gold."--_As You Like It._

When Marryott looked down from the oriel, he saw the horses huddled in a corner of the quadrangle. Rumney standing by the fountain, and several men about to swing the long piece of timber against the door a second time. Afar, at the gate by the road, as Hal could descry through the leafless trees, a mounted man kept watch. Master Rumney preferred to avoid witnesses, in his violation of the peace this Sunday morning.

Marryott flung open the cas.e.m.e.nt, and leaned out, a pistol in each hand.

"Back!" he cried to the men with the branch. "Back, or two of you shall die!"

The men stopped short, looked up at him, and stood hesitating.

"Batter down the door!" shouted Rumney to the men. "I'll look to this c.o.c.k!"

And he raised a pistol and fired at Hal. The ball sang past him and found lodgment in the wall of the gallery. The men sprang forward with the tree-branch. True to his threat, Hal let off both his pistols. Two men fell,--one struck in the shoulder, the other in the thigh. One howled, the other stared up at Hal in a kind of silent amazement.

With a wrathful curse, Rumney fired a second pistol at Marryott. But Hal, having now to reload his weapons, had disappeared in good time.

Moreover. Rumney's aim was bad, for the fact that his better arm, wounded the previous day, was now bound up and useless. Handing his pistols to two men, for reloading, and grasping from one of these men a weapon already loaded, the robber fiercely ordered his rascals to resume the a.s.sault upon the door. They obeyed. The door quivered at their blow; but its bars and braces held. As the men were rushing forward for a third stroke with their improvised ram, flame and smoke suddenly belched forth from the windows nearest the door, and two more fellows sank to the snow. Kit Bottle and one of Hal's wounded followers had fired through holes they had made in the gla.s.s.

Rumney's men rushed panic-stricken from the quadrangle, seeking protection beyond the angle of the kitchen wing. Their leader followed them. The men with the horses led off the frightened animals to the same place. The court was now clear. Marryott returned to the hall.