g from the rooms beyond.

Richard rested at that, and in the pause a thin voice shrilled from
within.

"Be off, you runagates! Off, I say! or I fire upon ye through the door!"

Giving no heed to the threat, Dick set up his clamor again, calling out
his name, and bidding the old man open to a friend. In some notching of
the hubbub I heard the unmistakable click of a gun-flint on steel. There
was barely time to trip my reckless batterer and to fall flat with him
on the door-stone when a gun went off within, and a handful of slugs,
breaching the oaken panel at the height of a man's middle, went
screeching over us.

Before I knew what he would be at, Richard was up with an oath, backing
off to hurl himself, shoulder on, against the door. It gave with a
splintering crash, letting him in headlong. I followed less hastily. It
was as black as a setter's mouth within, the gun fire having snuffed the
old man's candle out. But we had flint and steel and tinder-box, and
when the punk was alight, Jennifer found the candle under foot and gave
it me. It took fire with a fizzing like a rocket fuse, and was well
blackened with gunpowder. When the flint had failed to bring the firing
spark, the old man had set his piece off with the candle flame.

We found him in the nook made by the turn of the stair, flung thither,
as it seemed, by the recoil of the great bell-mouthed blunderbuss which
he was still clutching. The fall had partly stunned him, but he was
alive enough to protest feebly that he would take a dozen oaths upon his
loyalty to the cause; that he had mistook us for some thieving marauders
of the other side; craftily leaving cause and party without a name till
he should have his cue from us.

Whereupon Richard loosed his neckcloth to give him better breathing
space, and bidding me see if the revelers had left a heel-tap of wine in
any bottle nearer than the wine cellar, lifted the old man and propped
him in the corner of the high-backed hall settle.

The wine quest led me to the banqueting-room. Here disorder reigned
supreme. The table stood as the roisterers had left it; the very wreck
and litter of a bacchanalian feast. Bottles, some with the necks struck
off, were scattered all about, and the floor was stained and sticky with
spilt wine and well sanded with shattered glass.

I found a remnant draining in one of the broken bottles, and a cup to
pour it in; and with this salvage from the wreck returned to Jennifer
and h