The men who answered the rally-call were heavy with sleep and in no good temper; but they stood waiting for their orders without protest. When the Squire told them what was in the doing, their faces cleared. Sleep went by them like a dream forgotten. The Roundheads underneath fired some random shots, as a token of what would follow if there were no surrender; and, in reply, spits of flame ran out from every loophole of the Castle front. They were not idle shots. Elihu Give-the-Praise, with a stiff courage of his own, tried to rally his men, in spite of a splintered arm; but a second flight of bullets rained about them, and panic followed.
"A thrifty dawn," said the Squire of Nappa, as if he danced at a wedding.
For that day, and for three days thereafter, there was little sleep within the Ripley walls. Parliament men, in scattered companies, marched to replace the slain and wounded. There were sorties from the Castle, and ready fire from the loopholes overhead; and in the courtyard space lay many bodies that neither side could snatch for decent burial. There was not only famine sitting on the Ripley threshold now, but pestilence; for the moist heat of the summer was not good for dead or living men.
In the middle watch of the fourth night, Squire Metcalf heard a company of horsemen clatter up to the main gate. He thrust his head through a casement of the tower—the loopholes had been widened in these modern days—and asked gruffly the strangers' errand.
"Surrender while you can, Nappa men," said the foremost horseman.
"It is not our habit."
"There's a company of Fairfax's men—a thousand of them, more or less—within call."
"Ay, so are a thousand cuckoos, if you could whistle them to hand. Who are you, to come jesting at the gates?"
"Nephew to Lord Fairfax, by your leave."
"That alters matters. I'm Metcalf of Nappa, and aye had a liking for the Fairfaxes, though the devil knows how they came into t'other camp. Their word is their bargain, anyhow."