Merrylips ran to the spot, screaming "Fire!" too, with all her might, yet she could not hear her own voice in the din. All the men who were not on the firing line--horseboys and cooks and farriers and wounded troopers--flocked to the barn. They scrambled to the roof. They tore off the blazing thatch by handfuls and cast it into the court below. They fetched buckets of water. Merrylips worked with the rest. She was drenched to the skin with spilt water. She burned her hands with the blazing thatch. She was hoarse with shouting and half choked with smoke. All about her, on the sudden, sounded a clatter of hoofs. She felt herself caught roughly by the arm and dragged against the wall of the barn. Past her a line of horses, that plunged and struggled as they sniffed the fire, were heading for the great gate of Monksfield. "'Tis a sally they go upon, God speed 'em!" cried a voice beside her. She looked, and saw that it was Rupert that had spoken. It must have been he that had dragged her back from the hoofs of the horses. Still holding her arm, he led her across the court and down the flagged passage to the buttery hatch. "Give us to drink!" he cried. The man at the hatch gave them a leathern jack, half full of water that was dashed with spirits. They drank from it, turn and turn about, and Merrylips felt new courage rise in her. Through the flagged passage she looked out at the barn, where the smoke rose murkily against the sunset sky. She saw that with every puff it sank lower. She listened, pausing as she drank, and she heard, in what seemed blank stillness, only the feeble crackling of hand-arms. Rupert took the words from her lips. "They've silenced the great guns!" he cried. "The day is ours, young Venner! Hurrah!" Side by side they dashed out into the courtyard. They found it full of men who shouted and cast up their caps. The day was theirs! The day was theirs! they cried on all sides. In the nick of time Captain Brooke had led a charge that had silenced the great guns from Ryeborough. God and our right! Long live the king! Long live his loyal garrison of Monksfield! In the midst of the shouting and the rejoicing, the sallying party came riding back, with the captured guns. Among horses' heels and dismounting men Merrylips went shouting with the loudest: "Long live the king! Down wi' the Parliament! Death to all rebels!" till she found herself in the thickest of the crowd. A young man stood there, staggering, held up by the grasp that one of the troopers had laid upon his shoulder. His helmet was off. His chestnut hair was clotted with blood, and there was a long smear of it upon his cheek. He wore no sword, and his officer's sash was of orange, the color of the Parliament.