y House was strong and
well defended. Of the choice of evils, therefore, they thought this to
be the lightest, and, after an hour's hard riding, they arrived before
its walls. It was an old castellated building, with bastions and walls
capable of standing a siege. The party were gladly received by the
master, Sir Francis Burdett, who had placed his castle in a posture of
defense, but was short of men. Upon the news of the approach of the
enemy he had hastily driven a number of cattle into the yard, and had
stores of provisions sufficient to stand a siege for some time.

In a short time the Parliament force, consisting of five hundred footmen
and two hundred horse, appeared before the castle, and summoned it to
surrender. Sir Francis refused to do so, and fired a gun in token of
defiance. Soon a train was seen approaching in the distance, and four
guns were dragged by the enemy to a point of high ground near the
castle. Here the Roundheads began to throw up a battery, but were
mightily inconvenienced while doing so by the guns of the castle, which
shot briskly against them. Working at night, however, in two days they
completed the battery, which, on the third morning, opened fire upon the
castle. The guns were much heavier than those upon the walls, and the
shot, directed at a curtain between two towers, battered the stone
sorely. The Parliament footmen were drawn back a space from the walls so
as to avoid the fire of muskets from the defenders. There were in all in
the castle about two hundred men, one hundred having been collected
before the arrival of the troops of horse. These determined upon making
a desperate resistance when the wall should give way, which would, they
doubted not, be upon the following day. Everything that could be done
was tried to hinder the destruction made by the enemy's shot. Numbers of
sacks were filled with earth, and lowered from the walls above so as to
hang in regular order before it, and so break the force of the shot.
This had some effect, but gradually the wall crumbled beneath the blows
of the missiles from the Roundhead guns.

"We are useless here, save as footmen," Harry said that night to his
host. "There is a postern gate, is there not, behind the castle?
Methinks that if we could get out in the dark unobserved, and form close
to the walls, so that their pickets lying around might not suspect us of
purposing to issue forth, we might, when daylight dawned, make an attack
upon thei