St. George and St. Michael, Volume 3MacDonald, George
History
St. George and St. Michael, Volume 3
MacDonald, George
Great Britain -- History -- Civil War, 1642-1649 -- Fiction
But although he took the thing thus quietly and indeed merrily, it
revealed to him that their usual apartments were no longer fit for
the ladies, and he gave orders therefore that the great rooms in the
tower should be prepared for them and the children.
Dorothy's capacity for work was not easily satisfied, but now for a
time she had plenty to do. In the midst of the roar from the
batteries, and the answering roar from towers and walls, the ladies
betook themselves to their stronger quarters: a thousand necessaries
had to be carried with them, and she, as a matter of course, it
seemed, had to superintend the removal. With many hands to make
light work she soon finished, however, and the family was lodged
where no hostile shot could reach them, although the frequent fall
of portions of its battlemented summit rendered even a peep beyond
its impenetrable shell hazardous. Dorothy would lie awake at night,
where she slept in her mistress's room, and listen--now to the
baffled bullet as it fell from the scarce indented wall, now to the
roar of the artillery, sounding dull and far away through the ten-
foot thickness; and ever and again the words of the ancient psalm
would return upon her memory: 'Thou hast been a shelter for me, and
a strong tower from the enemy.'
She tended the fire-engine if possible yet more carefully than ever,
kept the cistern full, and the water lipping the edge of the moat,
but let no fountain flow except that from the mouth of the white
horse. Her great fear was lest a shot should fall into the reservoir
and injure its bottom, but its contriver had taken care that, even
without the protection of its watery armour, it should be
indestructible.
The marquis would not leave his own rooms and the supervision they
gave him. The domestics were mostly lodged within the kitchen tower,
which, although in full exposure to the enemy's fire, had as yet
proved able to resist it. But all between that and the library tower
was rapidly becoming a chaos of stones and timber. Lord Glamorgan's
secret chamber was shot through and through; but Caspar, as soon as
the direction and force of the battery were known, had carried off
his books and instruments.
CHAPTER L.
A SALLY.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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