On the second day of the leaguer the cannonade began. Bombard and mortar belched flame and smoke; the huge catapults strove with their gigantic arms; arbalisters wound their windlasses behind the ramparts. Shot screamed and hurtled, crashed and thundered against the walls, bringing down mortar and masonry in rattling showers. The battlements of Gambrevault spouted flame; archers plied their bows in bartisan and turret. A shroud of dust and smoke swirled about the place, the chaotic clamour of the siege sending the gulls wheeling and wailing from the cliffs. On the very second day Flavian was brought low by a shot hurling a fragment of masonry upon his thigh and bruising it to the bone. Stiff and faint, he was laid abed in his own state room, unable to stir for the twinging tendons, loth enough to lie idle. Modred, bluff, lusty smiter, took the command from him, and walked the walls. Hourly he came in to his lord’s chamber to tell of the cannonade and the state of the castle. Even Flavian from his cushions could see that the man’s black face looked grim and sinister. "How do they vex us?" was his question, as the thunder came to them from the meadows. Modred clinked his heels against the wainscotting of the window seat, and strove to sweeten his looks. He was not a man given to blandishing the truth. "Their damned bombards are too heavy for us. We are dumb." "Impossible!" "Sire, we shall have to hold Gambrevault by the sword." The man on the bed started up on his elbow, only to fall back again with a spasmodic twitching of the forehead. "And our bombards?" he asked. "Are toppled off their trunnions." "Ha!" "For the rest, sire, I have ordered our men to keep cover. The bowmen shoot passably. The outer battlements are swept." "And the walls?" Modred grimaced and stroked his beard. "There are cracks in the gate-house," quoth he, "that I could lay my fist in." What goodlier fortune for a man than to lie bruised when Love bears to him the bowl of dreams! What softer balm than the touch of a woman’s hand! What more subtle music than her voice! The girl Yeoland had betrayed a new wilfulness to the world, in that she now claimed as her guerdon the care of the man’s heart. She was in and about his room, a shadow moving in the sunlight, a shaft of youth, supple and very tender. Her eyes had a rarer lustre, her face more of the dawn tint of the rose. Love stirred within her soul like the sound of angels psaltering on the golden battlements of heaven.