in the window, my body hidden in the red rep
curtain, and only my eyes showing through a slit I made with my knife as
I peered along the barrel of "King George." I had resolved that with an
arm of such short "carry," I would not fire till I had them right
beneath the porch, or at least coming up the steps of the mansion.

It was in my mind that there would be a brutal rush at the door,
perhaps with pickaxes, perhaps with one of the swinging battering-rams I
had read of in the Roman wars, that do such wondrous things when cradled
in the joined hands of many men.

But in this I was much mistaken. The assailants were indeed rascals of
the same tarry, broad-breeched, stringfasted breed as Galligaskins of
the cellar door. But Galligaskins himself I saw not. From which I judge
that Agnes Anne had sorted him to rights with the contents of "King
George," laid ready for her pointing at the top of the steps by which an
enemy must of necessity appear.

But they had a far more powerful weapon than any battering-ram. We saw
them moving about in the faint light of a moon in her last quarter just
risen above the hills--a true moon of the small hours, ruddy as a fox
and of an aspect exceedingly weariful.

Presently there came toward the door two men with a strange and shrouded
figure walking painfully between them, as if upon hobbled feet. I could
see that one of the men was the tall man of the cave, he in whose hand I
had smashed the lantern. I knew him by a wrist that was freshly
bandaged, and also by his voice when he spoke. The other who accompanied
him was a sailor of some superior grade, a boatswain or such, dressed in
good sea cloth, and with a kind of glazed cocked hat upon his head.

It was a very weird business--the veiled woman, the dim skarrow of the
beacon, the foxy old moon sifting an unearthly light between the
branches, everything fallen silent, and our assailants each keeping
carefully to the back of a tree to be out of reach of our muskets.

They came on, the two men leading the woman by the arms till they were
out of the flicker of the flames both outside and under the shadow of
the house.

Then the tall man, whom in my heart I made sure to be Lalor Maitland, as
Irma said, held up his bandaged hand as a man does when he is about to
make a speech and craves attention.

"I have been ill-received," he cried, "in this the house of my
fathers----"

"Because you have striven to enter it as a thief and a robber!"