Lord Carleton made a move of defiance; but he wheeled his steed and led his men down the road by which they came. In the shadow of the woods they halted; and the Gray Wolf called about him three or four knights to whom he gave hurried orders. Very soon his troop broke into three parties. One rode to the right and another to the left, while the third, under the old lord’s command, remained opposite the main gate and drawbridge. Then our watchers on the battlements saw the other parties posted at points of vantage around the castle and a young squire riding at full gallop along the road to Teramore. The siege of Castle Mountjoy had begun. We passed some weary hours while the Carleton knights gave no sign of meaning to attack. The approaches to the drawbridge are steep and rocky, and the moat is commanded by the cross-bowmen from the slits in the towers and from the battlements above. I well knew that Carleton was an old and skillful soldier, even though a cruel and bloodthirsty one; and it was easy to be seen that he had no mind to lose any of his armored knights in vain attempts to reach us. Now and again a cross-bow bolt sped from our battlements toward the besiegers; and some of these rang on their helmets or breastplates; but the hounds had good Toledo armor, and no bolt found its way to joint or visor. I found none to stay me now; and stood by a firing slit, sending arrow after arrow at our enemies. Twice old Marvin had dinted with well-aimed bolts the hauberk on which rested the long gray beard of the leader of the pack. A younger knight, whom I took to be Ronald of Egleston, seemed to beg him to take to the shelter of the trees; but the Old Wolf just shook his head with impatience, and rode on from one to another of the sentry posts. At noon we could see in the edge of the wood, beneath the oak branches not yet clothed with leaves, leathern wallets opened and bread and meat passed around, this being followed by horns of ale and skins of wine from the load of a pack-mule tethered near by. Then my mother, aided by old Dame Franklin, her nurse as a child and ever her faithful servitor, and by me as the Heir of Mountjoy and the representative of my father here, carried to the sentinels on the ramparts and at the arrow slits bounteous refreshments of bread and cheese and ale, encouraging them the while by friendly, confident words and by her dauntless demeanor in readiness for the attack which we all well knew was to come. “Marvin,” she said, as we came near my old friend and worthy teacher of the arts of war, “shall we give them as good or better than they can send?” “Aye, that we will, Lady,” quoth Marvin with an obeisance, losing the while no glance of what might be happening in the edge of the wood opposite, “if the wind will but ease a thought, and the Gray Wolf take not to some shelter, I will land an arrow yet at the roots of that beard which flaunts there in the breeze like a banner for those robber hounds.”