One hundred and fifty men constituted the whole force which Kirkaldy could muster when he commenced his desperate defence. Ten times that number would scarcely have sufficed to maintain an adequate resistance; but high heroic valour in the face of death is insensible to any odds. After a vigorous resistance, the besiegers succeeded in gaining possession of the Spur or blockhouse--an outer work which was constructed between the fortress and the town; but an attempt to scale the rock on the west side utterly failed. The blockade had for some time been so strict, that the garrison began to suffer from want of provisions; but their sorest privation was the loss of water. Although there are large and deep wells in the Castle of Edinburgh, a remarkable peculiarity renders them useless in the time of siege. To this day, whenever the cannon are fired, the water deserts the wells, oozing out of some fissures at the bottom of the rock. There is, however, a lower spring on the north side, called St Margaret's Well, and from this the garrison for a time obtained a scanty supply. Under cloud of night a soldier was let down by a rope from the fortifications, and in this manner the wholesome element was drawn. This circumstance became known to the besiegers; and they, with diabolical cruelty, had recourse to the expedient of poisoning the well, and permitted the nocturnal visitor to draw the deadly liquid without molestation. The consequences, of course, were fearful. Many expired in great agony; and those whose strength enabled them to throw off the more active effects of the poison, were so enfeebled that they could hardly work the heavy cannon, or support the fatigue of watching day and night upon the battlements. "Maddened by the miseries they underwent, and rendered desperate by all hopes of escape from torture and death being utterly cut off, a frenzy seized the soldiers; they broke into a dangerous mutiny, and threatened to hang Lethington over the walls, as being the primary cause of all these dangers, from the great influence he exercised over Kirkaldy, their governor. But even now, when amid the sick, the dying, and the dead, and the mutinous--surrounded by crumbling ramparts and dismounted cannon, among which the shot of the besiegers were rebounding every instant--with the lives, honour, and safety of his wife, his brother, and numerous brave and faithful friends depending on his efforts and example, the heart of the brave governor appears never to have quailed even for an instant!"