“I shall have other things to show you, but they can keep till the evening. And now—as to the horse.” The beast raised quite a debate between them, since he complicated the matter of the bridge. Martin was for leaving him tethered in one of the glades, and trusting to luck and to Roger Bland’s men not discovering him if they rode to Woodmere within the next few days. And in the end Mellis agreed with him, since he was to be responsible for the contriving of a drawbridge. “Your plan has it,” she confessed. “I will go and tether Dobbin in one of the glades, and then come and serve as housewife. The man’s part shall be yours.” Martin went to work with fierce enthusiasm. He had a scheme in his head as to how the thing might be done, and he set about it when Mellis had crossed the water. He bored a hole through one end of the big beam, ran the rope through the hole and knotted it. At the other end he contrived a rough hinge by driving four stout stakes criss-cross into the ground, with a crossbar under them which could be pegged to the butt-end of the beam. The pulley wheels for the chains of the old bridge were still in the two chain holes of the gate-house, about ten feet from the ground. Martin piled some stones against the wall, climbed on them, and ran the rope through one of the chain holes. The trick worked very prettily. He found that he could raise and lower the beam from inside the gate-house, and all that was needed was a stake to which he could fasten the rope when the bridge was up. Mellis came back from the woods as he was driving the stake into the ground under the gateway. He had rolled his cassock over his girdle, and turned the sleeves up nearly to his shoulders, so that the muscles showed. And he looked hot and masterful and triumphant as he turned to show her how his bridge worked. “Well done, Martin Valliant. Let the beam down and I will come over and see if I am strong enough to raise it.” He lowered the beam, and she walked over to him. “Now I understand why you did not want to build a bridge that would carry a horse. Let me see what I can do. I might have to play bridgeward some day.” She found that she was strong enough to raise the beam, for she was tall and lithe, with a beautiful breadth across the bosom. Martin’s eyes shone. “Now I must build you a gate,” he said, “a gate that nothing but a cannon shot can shiver.” It took him the rest of the morning to pull down one of the outhouses, sort out his timber, and get it cut to size and shape. He had dragged the charred mass of the old gate from its bed of nettles, and had stripped it of its great iron hinges when Mellis came to call him to dinner. “I have done famously: hot meat, and new bread, and a dish of herbs. I found two old iron pots in the cellar, and I am quite kitchen proud.”