"Is guarded;—hark how they hammer at it now."
"Saint Mary and Saint John! then the place is surrounded,"
"On every side."
The wretched sisters wrung their hands in an ecstasy of grief; while Wad began to tighten his waistbelt, draw his bonnet over his brow, and spit with terrible deliberation into the palms of his brown hands, as the preliminaries of attempting something desperate.
"We have but one way," said Falconer.
"And that?" asked Barton.
"Is to sally out and die boldly," said he, as he pressed his lip to Sybilla's cold white cheek.
"To climb the wall of the precincts is impossible," said the priest: "it is ten feet high, and its gate is guarded by eight spearmen at least, I could reckon their lance-heads when glittering in the starlight."
"Right, and we are but three men on foot," said Barton.
"If we could but slip out and reach one of these trees," said the gunner, "there we might sit perched up and undiscovered till the burgesses of Musselburgh were roused with their axes and staves."