ver give me a pinch, try how I would; no, nor yet sell a man a
pen'orth. He kept it all to himself, just out of a nasty greedy spirit,
so that his cabbages might be bigger and heavier than ours at the Manor.
I'd have had some of that seed if I'd gone, for he couldn't have come
and stopped me now."

"No, poor fellow! I wonder how he is?"

"Getting better, sir. He's as tough as fifty-year-old yew. Nothing
couldn't kill him; but look, sir, look! See how they're getting up to
the terrace. Ah!"

This exclamation was made as a white puff suddenly seemed to dart from
one of the windows of the Hall, and then there was another, and another,
the reports seeming to follow, and then to echo from the next hill.

But no one in the attacking force seemed to fall, neither did it check
them. On the contrary, they appeared to be spurred into action, and
instead of creeping on as it were in a slow steady march, they broke up
into little knots, and dashed forward, while a second line kept steadily
on.

"Look at them! look at them, Master Fred! Don't it make you feel as if
you wished you was in it?" cried Samson, excitedly. "That's it; fire
away; but you won't stop 'em. All Coombeland boys, every man-jack of
'em, and you can't stop them when they mean business."

"No," said Fred between his teeth, as he tried to keep down the feelings
of elation engendered by the gallantry of the attack, by forcing himself
to think of how it would be were he Scarlett Markham, and these men
enemies attacking his home. "Look, look, Samson!" he whispered, with
his throat dry, his tongue clinging to the roof of his mouth, and the
scar of his worst wound beginning to throb.

"Yes, I'm a-looking, sir," said Samson, in as husky a voice. "There,
they've got a ladder up against the big long window, and they're
swarming up it. They'll be indirectly, and drive the long-haired
gentlemen flying like leaves before a noo birch broom."

"No," said Fred, shading his eyes with his hands; "no. Ah, did you hear
the crash? How horrible! Some of them must be killed."

"Not they, Master Fred. But I don't see how they did it. Fancy turning
the ladder right back with seven or eight lads running up it! But it
was well done."

"Can you see whether any one is hurt?"

"Not at this distance, sir. Not they, though, unless they've got any of
those long thin swords skewered into them. I've tumbled twice that
height out of apple-trees, and no one to fall up