"The horsemen are without. From yon room I saw them riding around the house and staring up at the windows."
"Which party is it?" said Hal, quickly, repressing his excitement.
"Rumney's."
Hal's brow darkened a little. He would rather it had been Barnet's, for then he should have been free of all doubt whether the pursuivant had indeed clung to the false chase.
At that instant a loud thud was heard on the front door, as if a piece of timber were being used as a battering-ram.
"You are right; I will send Oliver to watch," said Marryott.
He did so, with full instructions; and then roused all the able-bodied men. He distributed the firearms and ammunition; assigned each man to the guardianship of some particular door and its neighboring windows; gave orders for an alarm, and a concentration of force, at any point where the enemy might win entrance; left Kit in charge of the hall, at whose door there was present threat of attack, and hastened up-stairs to a gallery where an oriel window projected over that door. He looked down into the quadrangle. It was now broad daylight; snow was still falling.
Whether from a desire to avail himself of the bad weather for an attempt to plunder this deserted house, or from a suspicion that Oliver Bunch might have been both able and willing to open the mansion to the travellers, or from other reasons for thinking that they might be here, Captain Rumney had indeed led his troop into the grounds, made a preliminary circuit of the mansion, heard the horses in the stables, found all doors fast, detected signs of barricades in the windows, dismounted his company in the court, and caused a number of his men to assault the door with the fallen bough of a tree.