st say this: Y' are
the best maid and the bravest under heaven, and, if only I could live, I
would marry you blithely; and, live or die, I love you."

She answered nothing.

"Come," he said, "speak up, Jack. Come, be a good maid, and say ye love
me!"

"Why, Dick," she cried, "would I be here?"

"Well, see ye here," continued Dick, "an we but escape whole we'll marry;
and an we're to die, we die, and there's an end on't. But now that I
think, how found ye my chamber?"

"I asked it of Dame Hatch," she answered.

"Well, the dame's staunch," he answered; "she'll not tell upon you. We
have time before us."

And just then, as if to contradict his words, feet came down the
corridor, and a fist beat roughly on the door.

"Here!" cried a voice. "Open, Master Dick; open!" Dick neither moved
nor answered.

"It is all over," said the girl; and she put her arms about Dick's neck.

One after another, men came trooping to the door. Then Sir Daniel
arrived himself, and there was a sudden cessation of the noise.

"Dick," cried the knight, "be not an ass. The Seven Sleepers had been
awake ere now. We know she is within there. Open, then, the door, man."

Dick was again silent.

"Down with it," said Sir Daniel. And immediately his followers fell
savagely upon the door with foot and fist. Solid as it was, and strongly
bolted, it would soon have given way; but once more fortune interfered.
Over the thunderstorm of blows the cry of a sentinel was heard; it was
followed by another; shouts ran along the battlements, shouts answered
out of the wood. In the first moment of alarm it sounded as if the
foresters were carrying the Moat House by assault. And Sir Daniel and
his men, desisting instantly from their attack upon Dick's chamber,
hurried to defend the walls.

"Now," cried Dick, "we are saved."

He seized the great old bedstead with both hands, and bent himself in
vain to move it.

"Help me, Jack. For your life's sake, help me stoutly!" he cried.

Between them, with a huge effort, they dragged the big frame of oak
across the room, and thrust it endwise to the chamber door.

"Ye do but make things worse," said Joanna, sadly. "He will then enter
by the trap."

"Not so," replied Dick. "He durst not tell his secret to so many. It is
by the trap that we shall flee. Hark! The attack is over. Nay, it was
none!"

It had, indeed, been no attack; it was the arrival of another party of
stragglers from the