We had not long to wait in suspense. The men-at-arms and the peasants turned into the wood before coming within range of our archers. Soon after we heard the sound of many axes. Before a half hour had passed there came from the forest a body which seemed like a part of the wood itself. A hundred men ran out, clad in leathern jackets or the peasants’ homespun, and carrying no weapons save axes or poniards stuck in their belts, each bearing before him a great, withe-bound armful of branches. Following these came a score with planks and beams from a little lodge in the wood which they had torn down; then eight huge fellows, running with a tree, trimmed of its branches and carried butt foremost as a battering ram. This was the thing that made me quake for the safety of the castle, for it was clear to all of us that if those robber beasts could fill the moat with their fascines and lumber, they could swarm across, force down the drawbridge and with that accursed log break down the inner gate. Once inside the courtyard, they would hold all in the castle at their mercy. Surrounding the churls who acted as ram-bearers, and running as best they might in their heavy armor, was a group of knights and squires, led by the savage old graybeard of Carleton. Last of all came a dozen cross-bowmen with bows drawn and bolts in groove. A half dozen of our bolts hummed through the air at their on-coming line. I was at one of the arrow slits, glad indeed of a fair chance at the Carleton curs, and using as best I might the good steel bow which my father had brought back from the Crusade. Some of our first volley of bolts found their marks, but most flew over their heads or buried themselves in the bundles of branches which served them well as shields. With might and main we loaded and fired again, this time with more effect. One of my bolts felled the leader of the ram-bearers and threw his fellows into confusion. But now the line was at the moat, the fascines were hurled into it, the planks and beams followed helter skelter, and a few of the boldest of their men-at-arms dashed out on the footing thus made. Now indeed our bolts began doing their work. The fascines gone, the leathern jackets were but the sorriest protection, and at twenty to forty paces hardly a bolt failed to bring down its man. We were firing as fast as we could lay the bolts in groove. All their burdens were in the ditch, but it was not filled enough to allow a crossing. Some of those who had ventured on the planks and branches became foot-caught, slipped through to the water below and perished miserably like thieving rats caught and drowned in a trap of meal strewn on the water of a tub.