the thick cloud of smoke they had a vision
of the long black snakelike engine shooting back upon the recoil. For a
minute or more they were struck motionless with astonishment while the
reverberations died away and the smoke wreaths curled slowly up to the
blue heavens.

"Good lack!" cried Nigel at last, picking himself up and looking round
him. "Good lack, and Heaven be my aid! I thank the Virgin that all
stands as it did before. I thought that the castle had fallen."

"Such a bull's bellow I have never heard," cried Aylward, rubbing
his injured limbs. "One could hear it from Frensham Pond to Guildford
Castle. I would not touch one again--not for a hide of the best land in
Puttenham!"

"It may fare ill with your own hide, archer, if you do," said an angry
voice behind them. Chandos had stepped from the open door of the corner
turret and stood looking at them with a harsh gaze. Presently, as the
matter was made clear to him his face relaxed into a smile.

"Hasten to the warden, archer, and tell him how it befell. You will have
the castle and the town in arms. I know not what the King may think of
so sudden an alarm. And you, Nigel, how in the name of the saints came
you to play the child like this?"

"I knew not its power, fair lord."

"By my soul, Nigel, I think that none of us know its power. I can see
the day when all that we delight in, the splendor and glory of war, may
all go down before that which beats through the plate of steel as easily
as the leathern jacket. I have bestrode my warhorse in my armor and have
looked down at the sooty, smoky bombardman beside me, and I have thought
that perhaps I was the last of the old and he the first of the new; that
there would come a time when he and his engines would sweep you and me
and the rest of us from the field."

"But not yet, I trust, honored sir?"

"No, not yet, Nigel. You are still in time to win your spurs even as
your fathers did. How is your strength?"

"I am ready for any task, my good and honored lord."

"It is well, for work awaits us--good work, pressing work, work of peril
and of honor. Your eyes shine and your face flushes, Nigel. I live my
own youth over again as I look at you. Know then that though there is
truce with the French here, there is not truce in Brittany where the
houses of Blois and of Montfort still struggle for the dukedom. Half
Brittany fights for one, and half for the other. The French have taken
up the cause of Blois, and