"Then be to-morrow ours," said Morgan, with his usual
heat and impatience. "We will burn them up like a heap of dry faggots. The house, though well fenced against our shot, hath yet much inward building of wood, and you shall see a pretty bonfire kindled by my bomb-shells—a roaring blaze that shall ride on the welkin between here and Beeston Castle!"
"Whilst thou art plying thy vocation we will scale the walls, and the sword shall slay what the fire hath failed to devour," said Rigby.
"Fire and sword!" cried Egerton. "Ye are apt at a simile; but, methinks, these be your own similitudes."
"They give their prisoners no quarter," said Morgan; "and why should we sheath the sword when a weapon is at our own throat?"
"Why, doubtless they have more mouths to feed than they can conveniently supply," said the more pacific personage. "Living men, to keep them so, even though prisoners, require feeding."
"Our vengeance is sure, though tardy," said Rigby, rising in great choler. "The blood of these martyrs crieth from the ground. To-morrow!" and he breathed a bloody vow, looking fiercely up to heaven in the daring and impious attitude of revenge.
"We had best give her ladyship another summons; which, if she refuse, her blood be upon her own head!" Saying this, Egerton abruptly left the council.
On the next morning, which was cold and drizzly, a "pragmatical" drummer went out from the nearer trench, beating his drum for a parley, lest his person should be dismissed without ceremony to the hungry kites.
Early had he been summoned to Rigby's lodging, where Ashton and Morgan were contriving a furious epistle to the contumacious defenders of their lives and substance. A summons, couched in no very measured terms, was drawn up, to the purport that the fortress should be surrendered, and all persons, goods, arms, and munitions therein, to the mercy of parliament; and by the next day, before two o'clock, her ladyship to return her answer, otherwise at her peril. Their valour grew hotter with the reading of this cruel message, which they secretly hoped and suspected she would refuse. The drum-major was called in, one Gideon Greatbatch by name—a long, straight-haired, sallow-faced personage, of some note among the