"Well, if I fall, try to get him hence. After that maybe Erpwald will be satisfied. I set him in your charge, brother, for once you have saved him already. Fail me not."
Owen held out his hand and took his.
"I will not fail you," he said--"if I live after you."
Now from outside the voices began to be impatient, and Erpwald had been crying to my father to be speedy, unheeded. But in the midst of the growing shouts of the heathen my father turned to the men and asked them if they were content to die with him for the faith. And with one accord they said that they would.
Then with a thundering crash a great timber beam was hurled against the gate, shaking its very posts with the force of the six men who wielded it at a run, and in the silence that fell as they drew back Erpwald cried:
"For the last time, Aldred, will you yield?"
But he had no answer, and after a short space the timber crashed against the gate again and again. And across it waited our few, silent and ready for its falling.
I heard all this in the closed chamber, and the red light of the fire shone across the slit whence the light and fresh air came into it, but it was too high for me to look out of. I got up and dressed myself then, for no reason but that I must be doing something. I waxed excited with the noise and flickering light, and no one came near me. My old nurse was the only woman in the house, for the married house-carles lived in the village, and I daresay she slept through it all in her own loft. There was no thunderstorm that could ever wake her.
At this time my father sent a few of the men to the back of the house, that they might try at least to keep off the foe from climbing the stockade and so falling on them in the rear. But the timbers were high, and the ditch outside them full of water, and as it happened there was no attack thence.
Erpwald watched the back indeed, but all his force was bent on the gate.