"Pooh! pooh!" answered Edgar. "Go to bed, Eda, dear; you will catch cold, and then somebody will scold me to-morrow;" and away he walked after the party of men, which he also had seen from his room as he sat meditating near the window. The intruders seemed to know the park tolerably well, but Edgar Adelon knew it better; and cutting off an angle here, and taking a short turn there--by a hawthorn bush, round a clump of chestnuts, through a copse, over a rise--he contrived to come in sight of them continually, without being seen himself, till at length they reached the stone stile, and paused around it in an irregular mass. The young gentleman was at that moment standing with his back against a large horse-chestnut tree, and he could not at all make out the man[oe]uvres that followed. Some of the men stood upon the top of the stile, and seemed, with great labour and difficulty, to lift a large and very weighty object over the wall. Then came another effort of the same kind, and then the men began to pass rapidly into the road beyond the park. As soon as the last had disappeared, young Edgar Adelon darted out of his place of concealment, and followed; but by the time he reached the lane, although the moon had now risen, not a trace of the mob could be discovered; and he was turning away to the left, when suddenly a murmur of voices from the copse and valley below showed him the direction which those he sought had taken. There were ways through that copse only known to himself and the gamekeepers, unless, indeed, some of the neighbouring poachers were as learned in its recesses; but following one of these paths, he soon came within sight of the open space before the old priory, and a strange scene presented itself to his eyes. Full two hundred men were there assembled; some sitting on fragments of the old ruin, some sauntering idly about the little green, some bathing their hands in the stream, which sparkled not only in the light, pure and pale, of the newly-risen moon, but in that of two or three torches, which had by this time been lighted. In the centre, however, there was a group of some thirty persons, more busily employed, in the midst of whom shone the torches I have mentioned; and by their glare, Edgar now perceived, for the first time clearly, the heavy objects which the men had carried, and saw what they were now doing with them. Two small field-pieces, apparently of brass, lay upon the ground, detached from their carriages, which had been taken to pieces, and which the mob were busily putting together. A good deal of skill was shown in the task, and no slight eagerness appeared in the rough, bronzed countenances of the men around, as they looked on or assisted from time to time. The fixing the carriages together was soon complete, and then came the more laborious work of slinging the cannon, and adjusting them in their proper position. This was not accomplished without difficulty, but it was at length complete; and