In comparatively a brief time afterwards, the walls of Nabbfield were scaled; the gardens were trampled down, the trees uprooted, and the ponds in them drained dry. All this was done in silence: the place still slept in imagined security. But next came the thundering at doors, the tearing down of shutters, the smashing of glass, and, amidst all this, the shrieks and cries of the now-aroused inhabitants, though scarcely sensible from fear, astonishment, and drowsiness. The battle had begun, and the invading party had entered the premises. Scattered up and down the house might now have been seen numbers of exasperated and desperate men, with their faces blackened, and otherwise disguised, so as to render recognition next almost to impossible. Their first object seemed to be the seizure and security of the people who had the establishment in charge and keeping; and as this task, since the imprisonment of the Doctor, had devolved almost entirely upon his own wife, the strong man Robson, with their usual assistants, and a few additional ones, the force that had thus suddenly appeared against them found little or no difficulty in effecting their object. Robson himself had started up on hearing the noise produced by the first assault, and made his way, half-dressed, into one of the lower rooms, where he soon encountered half-a-dozen of the men already described. Thinking the disturbance had arisen in consequence of some of the patients having broken from their cells, he began to call upon them, in his usual manner, to submit to their keeper, whom, he doubted not, they would instantly recognise; but he was soon convinced of his mistake when he found himself inextricably seized by many arms at once, and, at the same moment, informed, by those who held him, that if he were not quiet, both in limb and tongue, they should knock him in the head without any further ceremony. They also told him they had come to destroy for ever that execrable establishment, and to set all the people confined there free; for it seemed to be the general opinion amongst them, that in the cases of all those unfortunate persons, as well as in that of Mr. Woodruff, injustice and robbery must necessarily have been committed, and not a single lunatic was really to be found upon the premises. Meanwhile, Mrs. Rowel, the Doctor's wife, had contrived to escape out of her room, and take refuge in a small outhouse, not far off; where, along with two of her maids, she remained shivering with cold and terror until all was over.