pected. Rightly or wrongly I can't say, but I've a
notion there was something in it. Anyway, his castle commanded the bay,
and the Parliament made up their minds to have it. Fulke had only time
to get a score or so of men with arms and provender inside his gate,
when a troop of roundheads came with their guns over the lulls and sat
down before it.

"The leader of the troop was a Colonel Frank, a cruel, ruffianly fellow,
as you shall hear. And the second in command was no other than young
Captain Morgan himself.

"He had had plenty of rough work during the war, and had done it well.
And it's a pity, sir, all the Parliament's officers weren't of his sort,
for he was as unlike Colonel Frank as a house-dog is to a wolf. When
first ordered on this expedition he didn't know where he was going, and
you can fancy his horror at finding out that he was to lay siege to the
very castle that held his lady-love. At first he would have held back,
and even refused. But he was under iron rules, and besides, thought he,
I might help my lady more by going than staying away.

"So he came with the troop to the castle, and looked wistfully up at the
little turret yonder, and prayed that she might never know that he was
where he was.

"Colonel Frank came expecting an easy task with this small out-of-the-
way castle. But it was not so easy as he thought. On two sides, as you
see, sir, no mortal man could get at it. And on the other two, Fulke
had guarded himself so well that by the end of a fortnight the
Roundheads were not an inch nearer getting the place than they had been
when they began.

"The rage of the colonel knew no bounds, and he vowed all sorts of
vengeance. You may fancy one of his men did not join in his threats.
Many a time that fortnight Captain Morgan wished a shot from the castle
might find him out and end his misery. And yet whenever he was tempted
to desert or quarrel with his colonel the thought of the lady left with
no protector at the mercy of such a man held him to his post. All he
could do was once or twice to urge the colonel to raise the siege, or
come to terms with its master. But Frank was bent on vengeance, and at
last poor Morgan had to desist for fear of getting suspected himself.

"About three weeks after the siege had begun, when the Roundheads were
beginning to lose spirit, and Morgan's hopes were beginning to rise once
more, a trooper rushed into the colonel's tent to say he had found a
s