"A ship went down the stream--an innocent-looking craft, apparently full of merchandise, and the great bell of the castle rang out its loudest, and Schouts and his men went down the grass slope and boarded her. They found her empty of life, save for a man at the helm, and the moment the first of Schouts' soldiers clambered on board he dropped into the river and swam ashore. Then to Schouts' horror, as I suppose, cannon roared out at the ship from amid the forest on both sides of the stream and sank the boats that carried his soldiers to the vessel. Soon her deck became a shambles. The robber lord and his men were caught like rats in a trap. Schouts sprang overboard, to swim back and look to the safety of his castle, but a cannon shot caught him at the leap, and he fell dead in the stream, for he sank like a stone, and his heavy armour helped to drag him down. None who leapt into the water escaped, whichever bank they thought to reach. Man after man was hit, and seen to throw up his hands, and sink. "Cries and the sound of guns had all the time been coming from the castle. There, too, the soldiers who had been sent to deal with the building itself were busy. The sound of the first shot fired at the decoy vessel was the signal to hundreds of soldiers who were hiding in the forest, close up to the castle moat. They swept out of the dense shadows in silence, and rushed across the drawbridge before the amazed wardens could drop the portcullis. In a few minutes the soldiers were swarming through the robber's stronghold, killing wherever there was resistance. So many of Schouts' servitors and fighting men had gone to the river to take part in the attack on the ship that little more than a handful were left to guard the castle, and these were either slain, or threw up their hands in token of surrender. "Then came the task of searching every corner, from roof to dungeon. Three or four men of note had lately been carried there, and were to be found, if they yet lived. In some of the horrible cells, like that into which they had thrust Master Tyndale, the Emperor's soldiers found some prisoners--poor creatures who had refused or could not pay the preposterous ransom, some of them nearly dead, and more than one demented with the horror and the loneliness. Such as could walk came out tottering, but others had to be carried, and were set down in the banqueting-hall, where they were fed and tended by the soldiers. "But, strangest thing of all," exclaimed the forester, and those who listened wondered at the look on his face--"I would that Master Tyndale were with us in this room to hear what next I have to say," Engel said, breaking off in his story; "but the good man is buried in that holy task of his, and I must tell him of it later on."