While the cannon were wheeled round, the tumbrils cast off, the magazines opened, and powder and shot taken therefrom; and while the cannoniers commenced pointing and charging them home, Leslie formed his hundred arquebusiers behind a knoll, where they fixed their rests into the turf, and opened a fire as close and rapid as it was possible for soldiers to maintain with these cumbrous fire-arms, which carried balls of two, and even three ounces; which were loaded by means of a powder-horn; were levelled over forks, and were fired by means of a matchlock. The reports were loud and deep, and the rocks of the Cairntable repeated them with a thousand reverberations. White as snow, the smoke of arquebuse and pistolette broke (but at long intervals) from the strong dark walls of the grange, and their balls tore up the soft turf, as they fell among the little band of besiegers, or whistled over their heads; for so well were they posted, that during two hours of incessant firing not one was ever touched. "Batter me down the entrance-gate!" cried Roland to his gunners; "'Tis easier to punch holes in an oak plank than a stone rampart; so down with it, my brave cannoniers--for this night we will carry the place by assault or die in its ditches!" "Art thou quite prepared for that?" asked Leslie. "A true soldier is prepared for everything," replied the elated Vipont; "let us only have yonder gate beaten down by daylight, and, with my sword for a wand, I will act your gentleman usher when night falls." The cannon were carefully levelled and pointed; fire flashed from their muzzles; smoke curled up in the sunshine; and their reports rang like thunder among the windings of the Douglas. One shot crashed through the massive gate, beating a large hole in it; the other struck the battlements, and threw down a heap of masonry, which fell, amid a cloud of dust, into the ditch below. Hereupon high words ensued between old Lintstock and the lance-spesade, whose thumb was placed upon the vent of the culverin, which he was reloading. "It ill becomes a gle'ed gunner like you," Roland heard him say, "to heed me less than an auld pair o' boots; but lang enough before you saw the blessed light o' day I had levelled everything like a cannon, frae a quarter Moyenne up to auld Monce Meg herself; and here now, I will wager you a stoup o' Bourdeaux, that my next shot will go straight to the keyhole." "Done!" replied the lance-spesade; "twa stoups if you like--and here is my thumb on't." The lance-spesade levelled the culverin; applied his right eye to three sides of the breech, carefully adjusted the quoins, and fired. The ball struck a coat of arms above the gate, and threw a cloud of splinters around it in every direction. "She throws high," said the soldier, throwing down his match, discomfited.