Simon Foster looked at the girl’s figure, the orderly line of muskets. She seemed workmanlike; and he approved her with a sudden, vigorous nod.
“The light’s dim, Miss Nance,” he growled, turning to hobble down the corridor, “but I reckon ye can aim.”
It was so the long night began. The wind had ceased altogether. From out of doors there was no sound, of man or beast. The snow fell in thicker flakes, and, working silently as those concerned with burials do, it laid a shroud about the courtyard, about the many gables of the house, about the firs and leafless sycamores that guarded Windyhough from the high moors.
On the north side of the house, where the stables and the huddled mass of farm-buildings stood, Goldstein’s men were preparing to find comfort for the night as best they could. From time to time there was a sound of voices or of shuffling footsteps, deadened by the snow; for the rest, a dismaying stillness lay about the house.
To Rupert, to Nance, guarding the north window, to Simon Foster, this silence of attack seemed heavier, more unbearable, than the do-nothing time that had preceded it. There had been the brief battle-fury in the courtyard, the zest of getting ready for the siege; and now there was only silence and the falling snow.
And out of doors Goldstein was no less impatient. He did not know that he was faced by a garrison so slender; for there is a strength about a house that has shown one bold front to attack, and afterwards gives no hint of the numbers hidden by its walls. Already two were dead, and two badly wounded, from among his company of one-and-twenty; and the rest were hungry, body-sore, and in evil temper. It was no time to force an entry. Better wait till daylight, get his men out of gunshot, and find food for them somewhere in the well-stocked farm-steadings.
They got round to the mistals on the west side of the house—moving close along the walls, afraid of every window that might hide a musket—and found Sir Jasper’s well-tended cattle mooing softly to each other as they rattled their stall-chains. The warm, lush smell of the byres suggested milk to Goldstein, and, since stronger drink seemed out of reach, he welcomed any liquor that might take the sharpest edge of hunger from his men. He bade them milk the cows; and into the midst of this tragic happening that had come to Windyhough there intruded a frank, diverting comedy, as the way of life is. Not one of them had milked a cow before, or guessed that Martha had been busy with her pail already; but each thought it a simple matter, needing no more than a man’s touch on the udders. They found a milking-stool abandoned long ago by Martha because one leg was unstable, and one by one they tried their luck. The first who tried was kicked clean off the stool; the next man made a beginning so foolish and unhandy that the roan cow looked back at him in simple wonderment; and Goldstein, a better officer than his men understood, welcomed the laughter and uproar that greeted every misguided effort to fill the milking-pail. They had not laughed once since Derby, these men who were getting out of hand.
By and by the sport palled on them; and Goldstein, faced once again by their hunger and unrest, found all his senses curiously alert. From the laithe, next door to the byres, he heard the bleating of sheep in-driven yesterday from the high lands when the weather-wise were sure that snow was coming.
“There’s food yonder, lads,” he said sharply. “Drink can wait.”