“As long as it is necessary,” said Roy, proudly; “till my father comes with his men, and scatters all these people away.”
“To be sure, yes,” said the secretary. “How proud he will be of you, Roy, when he knows all.”
Roy hurried down to join his lieutenant, whom he found humming a tune in the armoury, busy over some preparations by the light of a lamp.
“You don’t seem in very bad spirits, Ben,” he said. “Bad spirits! What about, sir? Why, it’s like the good old time when your father and I were young. Not so young as you, though! Well, sir, we’ve been thinking over our plans. They won’t do anything yet—only shut us in. They’re going to wait for more men and more artillery.”
“But we must be well on the watch against surprise, Ben.”
“Why, of course, sir! You’ll have your watch on the towers. And you’ve seen how they’ve got a ring of patrols round us?”
“Yes, I watched them. So we may give up all hope of getting those ten of Raynes’s.”
“I’m afraid so. It’s a bad job, sir, as the corporal was saying just now, for we’d trained them into being our best gunners.”
“A terrible loss.”
“Well, not so very terrible, sir, because we must train up some more. Oh! we can keep the enemy outside the moat and enjoy ourselves while they’re starving without a roof to cover them. But I want to say a serious thing or two, sir.”