"Tush! Tell me true," she said. "Such fables are for children." "Well then," said I, "since I may not be a bird, what say you to a fish?" "I cannot abide ’em, save broiled, and with sauce," she said. "Then may the broiling I shall suffer this day, and the sauce of good hard knocks, bring me to the top of your good favour," said I. "But, indeed, I swim like a fish, and dive like a duck——" "Or a goose?" she caught me up. "But with no quackery," said I, "I heaved myself up to my window-sill— "Then you should have been trussed," she said. "Nay, madam, the trust is yours," said I; "and from the sill I leapt into your lake, and so got myself, somewhat damp and muddied, to the further shore." "And without a wound?" she said, catching at her breath. "Save in my heart," I said in a low voice. "What! hath any Englishman a heart?" she said; and then as I glanced at the frowning dame beside her, she cried right merrily— "Oh, she knows no English!" and then with some confusion and haste she asked me of the Queen and the Court, and led me insensibly to relate to her some particulars of my past life, whereby the time sped away so fast, and I had so far forgotten the posture of our affairs, that I suffered a shock when Stubbs came running to me and said that the Irishmen were setting across. I called myself an ass, snatched my sword, and made to the door. "God bless thee with perseverance!" said the maid softly, using the Queen’s words in that brief epistle, which I had shown to her in our discourse; and with those sweet tones making melody in my heart I went forth to try a bout with Rory Mac Shane. *VII* When I came to the wall I beheld a half-score of the hide-boats being propelled over the lake, and four or five of the new-made platforms, each one pressed down by the burthen of men upon it. The number of our assailants was, I suppose, above a hundred, and against them we had less than a score. These by my appointment had taken post along the wall, having, besides their weapons, fragments of rock gathered from the ruinous battlements, stink-pots of homely device, and such other missiles as the people had been able to prepare. Of firearms we had but two old rusty pieces, my own pistol and the guns of my men having been sent away the night before with the succours dispatched to Kedagh O’Hagan. But I observed joyfully that our assaulters were in little better case in that regard, for when their quaint, unsteady vessels had come within shot of us, they discharged upon us only two or three bullets, which did us no harm, so ill-directed were they. My man Stubbs and another fellow gave them a shot apiece in reply, or rather they would have done, had not Stubbs’ musket burst in his hand, one of the fragments striking his brow and stunning him for some time. He bore the mark of it to his dying day.