Here, under the stress of a new force, my thoughts flew off at a tangent, and I said to myself, "Bravo, Romeo! You shall find me a rare Juliet."
I had, indeed, much ado to keep from laughing aloud, as my situation was delicious, not to say delicate. For, on a sudden, noiselessly as the beat of a bat's wing, two feet of ladder had shot up above the eaves, and even now an ardent lover was hasting aloft, dreaming of lispings and kissings to come. I mustn't frighten him too soon or too much or he'd drop off, but as soon as he was fairly on the slope he should sip the sweetness of lips of steel. So I crept back, got a pistol, and stood to the left of the window.
I waited till his body darkened the room and then took a furtive look at him. It was no village lover climbing up at peep of dawn to greet his lass. It was one of Brocton's dragoons, one of the five who had been at the Hanyards.
In a twink I shot him. Without a word, he slithered down the tiles, leaving a mush of blood-red snow. His right leg slipped aslant between two rungs of the ladder, and his body, checked in its fall, swung round and dangled over the eaves.
In the room was a large oaken clothes chest. I dragged it to the light, tilted it on end, and jammed it into the gable of the window, which, luckily, it fitted completely, and so blocked any further attack from the roof. Snatching up my weapons, I tumbled down the ladder, only to hear the heavy tramping of feet upstairs. Standing by Margaret's door, I waited until the head and shoulders of the first man came in sight. He carried a lantern, and its yellow rays lit up for me the ugly face of the sergeant of dragoons. I fired my second pistol at him, crashing the lantern to pieces. Down he went, whether hit or not I did not know. In the darkness I heard the rush of a second man who came on so fearlessly and fast that he was far into the passage before I met him with a fierce thrust of my rapier. I thrilled with the zeal of old Smite-and-spare-not as, for the first time, I felt the point of my rapier in a man's body, and drove it home with a yell. Down he went too, with a gurgle of blood in his throat, and Margaret, coming out of her room, stumbled over his body as she raced after me along the passage.
The Colonel was at the stair-head before me, but there was, for the moment, no work for him. The enemy had tumbled noisily downstairs into the hall, and were collecting their scattered wits after their first rout. To my regret, the raucous cursings of the sergeant showed that he had not been killed and apparently not even hit.
"God damn ye!" he yelled. "Ten of you driven back like sheep by a raw youth. I'll settle with ye for it. Think I picked ye out of the stews and stink-holes of London to stand this? There isn't one of ye with the guts of a louse. I'll take the skin off the ribs of you for this, damn ye, and most of your pimp's flesh along with it!"
"What sort of guts was it brought yow tumblin' down so quick?" put in the surly voice of the landlord. "Yow cudna 'a come any faster if yer blasted yed 'ad been blown to bits instead of my lantern."
Some of the men laughed at this, whereon the sergeant blasphemed enough to make a devil from hell shiver. He cowed the dragoons, but the innkeeper only growled, "A three-bob lantern blown to bits! Fork out three bob!"
"I'll have him if I have to blow the house to bits!" vociferated the sergeant.