All we could do was to keep the little courtyard clear, and to shoot whenever we saw a bonnet rise up or a limb carelessly exposed. But we both yearned for something more lively to put an end to our suspense.
Nor had we long to wait.
From the east side of the tower which looks to the sea, there came the sound of a loud report, a tumble of stones, and then a loud, continual, and most pitiful crying, as of a man hurt unto death. I ran up into the battlements above and set my head through a loophole. Beneath me lay a fine-looking young man, with his red bonnet fallen aside, clad in a short white coat, with doublet and hose also of red. He was unarmed so far as I could see.
'Who are you, and what brought you there?' I cried to him from the turret loop.
A massy corner-stone fallen from the castle lay on his chest, and a pile of other rocks and stones was heaped about his legs. He turned his eyes upward at me and tried twice to speak.
At last he said, with many pants and piteous groans, 'I am Allan Crosby, from Auchneil. I brought you a letter from my Lord Cassillis. I landed below and came up by the path, but when I got near I heard firing and saw the door shut. So I tried to clamber up the castle wall to cry in at the window to you, because you were my friends. And even as I climbed, the stones of the castle fell upon me, and now they are crushing the life out of me.'
'Where is the letter from my Lord?' said I.
The man cast his eyes about him as if to look for it.
'I had it in my hand just now,' he said.
I saw a scrap of parchment a little way from him, and asked if that were the letter.