the walls so as to avoid the fire of muskets from the defenders.  There were in all in the castle about two hundred men, one hundred having been collected before the arrival of the troops of horse.  These determined upon making a desperate resistance when the wall should give way, which would, they doubted not, be upon the following day.  Everything that could be done was tried to hinder the destruction made by the enemy’s shot.  Numbers of sacks were filled with earth, and lowered from the walls above so as to hang in regular order before it, and so break the force of the shot.  This had some effect, but gradually the wall crumbled beneath the blows of the missiles from the Roundhead guns.

“We are useless here, save as footmen,” Harry said that night to his host.  “There is a postern gate, is there not, behind the castle?  Methinks that if we could get out in the dark unobserved, and form close to the walls, so that their pickets lying around might not suspect us of purposing to issue forth, we might, when daylight dawned, make an attack upon their guns, and if we could spike these the assault would probably cease.”

The attempt was determined upon.  The Roundhead infantry were disposed behind as well as in front of the castle, so as to prevent the escape of the besieged; but the camp was at a distance of some four hundred yards.  The chains of the drawbridge across the moat were oiled, as were the bolts of the doors, and at three in the morning the gate was opened, and the drawbridge lowered across the moat.  A thick layer of sacks was then placed upon the drawbridge.  The horses’ hoofs were also muffled with sacking, and then, one by one, the horses were led out, the drawbridge was drawn up again, and all was quiet.  No sound or motion in the Puritan camp betrayed that their exit was observed, and they could hear the challenges of the circuit of sentries passed from man to man.

When the first streak of dawn was seen in the east the troop mounted their horses, and remained quiet until the light should be sufficient to enable them to see the nature of the ground over which they would have to pass.  This they would be able to do before they themselves were observed, standing as they were close under the shadow of the walls of the castle.  As soon as it was sufficiently light the trumpets sounded, and with a burst they dashed across the country.  Heeding not the bugle calls in the camp of the Puritan infantry, they rode straight at the guns.  These were six hundred yards distant, and before the artillerymen could awake to their danger, the Royalists were upon them.  Those that stood were cut down, and in a minute the guns were spiked.  Then the cavalry swept round, and as the Puritan horse hastily formed up, they charged them.  Although but half their numbers, they had the superiority in the surprise at which they took their foes, and in the fact of the latter being but half armed, not having had time to put on their breastplates.  The combat was a short one, and in a few minutes the Puritans were flying in all directions.  The pikemen were now approaching on either side in compact bodies, and against these Harry knew that his horsemen could do nothing.  He therefore drew them off from the castle, and during the day circled round and round the place, seizing several carts of provisions destined for the wants of the infantry, and holding them in a sort of leaguer.