The castle of Châlus, whose ruined keep-tower still stands on a low hill above the little river Tardoire, contained at the moment about forty persons; only two of these were knights, and some of the others were women.[1276] For three [Sidenote: _March 24-6_] days Richard’s miners dug under the walls while he with his crossbowmen rode round about them, discharging a [Sidenote: _Friday March 26_] shower of missiles into the enclosure.[1277] On the third day the little garrison offered to surrender on condition of safety for life and limb and the retention of their arms; but Richard refused, swearing he would capture and hang them all.[1278] That afternoon he again rode forth, accompanied by Mercadier, round about the castle, shooting with his crossbow at any man whom he saw on the wall; and this time he rashly went without any defensive armour except an iron headpiece and a buckler. His daring was more than equalled by one man among the besieged, who with a crossbow in one hand and a frying-pan in the other had stood nearly all day on a bastion of the tower, dexterously turning aside with his makeshift shield every missile aimed at him, and carefully scanning the ranks of the besiegers,[1279] evidently in the hope of discovering their leader. From one account it appears that when at last his opportunity came, he had discharged all his quarrels, and the bolt which he shot at the unprotected figure was one of the enemy’s own which he snatched from a crevice in the wall where it had stuck just within his reach.[1280] Richard, hearing the sound of the missile in the air, looked up and greeted the bowman with a shout of applause. That look cost him his life. He bent down to shelter himself under his shield, but too late to avoid the arrow; it struck his left shoulder at the joint of the neck, glanced downward, and became fixed in his side.[1281] No one but Mercadier was near enough to see exactly what had occurred. To him Richard gave orders for a general assault to be made on the castle[1282]; then, quietly and alone, he rode back to his tent. There he tried to pull out the arrow; the shaft broke, leaving the barb imbedded in the wound, and he was compelled to send for a surgeon to extract it. One was found, says an English chronicler, “among that accursed tribe, the followers of the impious Mercadier,” and it is to this man’s handling of the case that the same writer ascribes its fatal termination; but this is sufficiently accounted for by his own description of the drawbacks attending the operation, performed hurriedly by lantern-light on a patient so fat that the steel, buried in his flesh, was extremely difficult to find, and when found, still more difficult to remove[1283]; a patient, moreover, whose character combined with his physical constitution to make him an extremely unmanageable invalid. A second doctor seems to have been afterwards called in;[1284] but in spite of all the remedies that