"But your old Renard was a brick. He spotted the sportsmen as if by magic and remembered the boys whose fathers had shootings. He helped a lot, I can tell you--and tucked up his black gown and hopped about on his thin legs (which were black too) as lively as a cricket. "Brown was attending to the electric lamp and barbed-wire obstacles while I was doing the drill sergeant, and by ten we had the business in pretty fair shape. I set the posts as you told me, sir, or as near as possible. For, of course, having been a pupil, the old place was like my bedroom to me, and I knew just where they would try to rush us." His father nodded, and the smile which accompanied the nod encouraged the hero to continue. Not that this was necessary, for at his elbow Alida was behaving most foolishly. ("_You_ never looked at me like that, Rhoda Polly," I whispered, "the night when we blew them back from the Big Gate, when Jack Jaikes and I fought in the open." "Hadn't time," retorted Rhoda Polly, "besides, I was in that business as well as you. Did you think that I had been left behind in the Chateau cellar?") "Just when twelve struck," Hugh proceeded, "they dashed into the ditch with a yell--just at the places you said, father, when I showed you the plan I had made. But the wire and stakes brought them all up standing. My black regiment fired all round the wall. I don't believe they hit many, but the crackle of the rifle fire was a very disconcerting circumstance, and at any rate Brown and I 'scourged' them well with your repeaters, sir. Brown had switched on his big search-light and everything was as bright as glory. "'How many were there?' That I could not say, sir. They looked a lot when they clumped together, which was not often. But the line was thin-sown when they spread out to take cover. The professors swore to a hundred, but I could not really make it more than fifty. "They let fly at us, but we were all behind the big stone wall. The bullets whizzed over us, and spotted the walls, but that was all. Then they drew off to hold a council. "Once they nearly got us. They had dynamite or some infernal stuff, and they blew up the outer main gate. But then, as you know, that did not much matter, for the really strong one is twenty yards farther on, and those who ran in found themselves up Blind Alley. I tell you, sir, Brown and I sacrificed them before they got out. But they kept it up, firing at us till dawn without ever making a hit. They saw the uselessness of this at last, and were just hopping off over the plateau on the road to Spain, when the red breeches put in an appearance, and nabbed the lot--that is very nearly all, for some got away by the woods. "'After that?'--Well, sir. I shall tell you the rest to-night. I came down here to see how Mr. Cawdor was getting on."