rn with three long days of siege, are holding,
with what strength and courage are left them, the Gatehouse of
the Bridge of Cashala, which is the key to the road that leads
into Connaught. The upper chamber of the Gatehouse, in which they
make their stand, is a narrow, dim-lit apartment, built of stone.
At one side is a small fireplace, and beside it a narrow, barred
door, which leads to the stairhead. At the end of the room,
gained by a single raised step, are three slit-like windows,
breast-high, designed, as now used, for defense in time of war.
The room is meagrely furnished, with a table on which are
powder-flask, touch-box, etc., for charging guns, a stool or two,
and an open keg of powder. The whole look of the place, bare and
martial, but depressed, bespeaks a losing fight. On the hearth
the ashes of a fire are white, and on the chimneypiece a brace of
candles are guttering out.
The five men who hold the Gatehouse wear much soiled and torn
military dress. They are pale, powder-begrimed, sunken-eyed, with
every mark of weariness of body and soul. Their leader, JOHN
TALBOT, is standing at one of the shot-windows, with piece
presented, looking forth. He is in his mid-twenties, of
Norman-Irish blood, and distinctly of a finer, more nervous type
than his companions. He has been wounded, and bears his left hand
wrapped in a bloody rag. DICK FENTON, a typical, careless young
English swashbuckler, sits by the table, charging a musket, and
singing beneath his breath as he does so. He, too, has been
wounded, and bears a bandage about his knee. Upon the floor (_at
right_) KIT NEWCOMBE lies in the sleep of utter exhaustion. He is
an English lad, in his teens, a mere tired, haggard child, with
his head rudely bandaged. On a stool by the hearth sits MYLES
BUTLER, a man of JOHN TALBOT'S own years, but a slower, heavier,
almost sullen type. Beside him kneels PHELIMY DRISCOLL, a
nervous, dark Irish lad, of one and twenty. He is resting his
injured arm across BUTLER'S knee, and BUTLER is roughly bandaging
the hurt.
For a moment there is a weary, heavy silence, in which the words
of the song which FENTON sings are audible. It is the doleful old
strain of "the hanging-tune."
[Footnote 1: Included by permission of the author and of Messrs.
Henry Holt and Company, the publishers, from the volume
_Allison's Lad and Other Martial Interludes._ (1910).]
FENTON (_singing_).
Fortune, my foe, why dost thou frown on me,
And wi
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