About four there came a shrill _tirr-r-r-r_ of the small call-bell and every sleeper was instantly on his feet. How Jack Jaikes got to the ticker I do not know, but long before the men had their belts snapped, he was reading off to them the location of the alarm. "Between posts 48 and 49, Norwell and Omand warned. Ready there, file out!" The dark figures passed one by one out of the faint copper glow of the forge, stood each a moment against the blue-black mystery of the night framed in the doorway, and were then lost in the obscurity. I thought of following, but first of all I was afraid of Jack Jaikes, who had made no sign to me, and secondly and chiefly, in a yard and among defences so sown with dangers and (for all I knew) corded with live wires, I might easily do myself much harm, and the general welfare of the cause little good. So, sorely against the grain, I stayed where I was. Presently the men came laughingly back, their humour quite vanished. Two of the town goats--for Aramon was near enough to the mountains and to Spain to possess many of these--had chosen to contest the narrow way to the factory wall, from a pure point of honour as gentlemen should, for there was no lady in the case. They had died fighting, and a bayonet's point had been requisitioned to dislodge them both. They were now brought in and handed over to the cook for preparation. Both had been hard fighters in their time, and looked as if they would furnish what Caroline in "The Heir at Law" calls "not an inviting meal." Everybody was now fully waked up, and no one thought any more of sleep. The night was still of the indigo dark peculiar to the South, and outside, I could see the stars sinking one by one. The glow on the forge-hearth was set blazing, tea billies were soon boiling, and there was a fragrant smell of coffee in the air. The clean, appetising hiss of frying bacon struck a joyous note. Someone set a big globe of electric light flaring, when, _whisk-whisk_, a quartette of bullets tore through the shed and knocked it to flinders. Then in like an avenging genie entered Jack Jaikes. "If I kenned wha that idiot was that set yon infernal thing blazing, I would knock the amazing friskiness out o' him. Have I not telled ye a score o' times that ye are no to make exhibitions o' yerselves? Exhibitions, did I say, waur nor that, juist blank eediot targets that the Frenchmen haena sense enough to hit!" He made a silence about him, for all knew that his angers were black and that he would stick at nothing, but, if provoked, strike with what came nearest to his hand.