"So soon?" enquired the priest in surprise.
"Yes, good Father. I am on fire with impatience. While the lady Beatrice d'Alençon is held in yon fortalice how can I be aught else? Think not that I shall endanger our cause by my hastiness. The garrison hath had a rude shock this day, and if we can deliver another before they have had time to recover, the advantage is all on our side."
"Say on, then, Sir Squire. Thy counsel hath been good hitherto, and I am most ready to listen. What is next to be done?"
"Set all the men but those at the mangonels to work cutting great bundles of undergrowth. Let the women and children also help, and let the faggots be cut at some little distance, so that the thickness of the woods here, which is our protection against a sortie, be not destroyed. The bundles of undergrowth we must use to fill up the moat and give us a foothold for the assault upon the gates and walls."
"Yes, yes; I thought that would be the next move."
"Then I want thee to strip a wagon of its strongest pair of wheels. Leave them on the axle. Then fell a tall young tree, with trunk about the thickness of a man's thigh. Lop off all its branches and cap the end with iron. Then lay it across the axle and lash it there. Running easily on its wheels, and thrust by a score of men, the tree will make a battering-ram that will, I promise thee, reduce the drawbridge and gates of Castle Ruthènes to splinters within the space of a few minutes."
"Ha! but will not the wheels of thy ram sink into the filled-in moat and there stick fast?"
"Nay; make the ram so long that ere the wheels shall reach the edge of the moat the battering end will reach drawbridge and gates. I tell thee, good Father, we shall get to grips beneath yon frowning gateway before many hours are past. Have thy men the spirit for a conflict, stark and grim, waged with trained men in a narrow space where numbers are of little avail?"
"I will answer for them, Sir Squire," replied the priest quickly. "They have no training, but they have desperation, and that will carry them on."
"Aye, I think so too. And now let us to work, and make ready as quickly as we can."