don't suppose they are much
of marksmen, but even a random shot will tell at times, and I want to
take you all back safe with me; so keep low when you get on the roof,
lads, and don't show your heads more than you can help."

Heralding their attack by a discharge from their muskets, whose balls
whistled harmlessly round the tower, the peasants rushed forward to the
door and commenced an assault upon it with hatchets and axes.

Malcolm and his men each lifted a heavy stone and rolled it over the
parapet, the five loosing the missiles simultaneously. There was a dull
crash, and with a terrible cry the peasants fled from the door. Looking
over, Malcolm saw that six or seven men had been struck down. Five of
these lay dead or senseless; two were endeavouring to drag themselves
away.

"That is lesson number one," he said. "They will be more prudent next
time."

The peasants, after holding a tumultuous council, scattered, most of
them making for a wood a short distance off.

"They are going to cut down a tree and use it as a battering ram,"
Malcolm observed. "They know that these large stones are too heavy for
us to cast many paces from the foot of the wall. We must get to work
and break some of them up. That will not be difficult, for the wind and
weather have rotted many of them half through."

The stones were for the most part from two to three feet long and nine
or ten inches square. Two were laid down on the platform some eighteen
inches apart and another placed across them. The four men then lifted
another stone, and holding it perpendicularly brought it down with all
their strength upon the unsupported centre of the stone, which broke in
half at once. To break it again required greater efforts, but it yielded
to the blows. Other stones were similarly treated, until a large pile
was formed of blocks of some ten inches each way, besides a number of
smaller fragments.

In half an hour the peasants reappeared with a slight well grown tree
some forty feet long which had been robbed of its branches. It was laid
down about fifty yards from the church, and then twenty men lifted it
near the butt and advanced to use it as a battering ram, with the small
end forward; but before they were near enough to touch the door the
bearers were arrested by a cry from the crowd as the defenders appeared
on the tower, and poising their blocks of stone above their heads,
hurled them down. Three of them flew over the heads of the peas