She was younger in years than myself, but something of race, of refinement, of experience, some flavour of an adventurous past and of strange things seen and known, made her appear half-a-dozen years the senior of a country boy like me. "Has he come?" she asked, before ever she came into the kitchen; "is he afraid?" "Only of being in a house alone with two girls," said Agnes Anne, "but I am most afraid of father's blunderbuss which he has brought with him." "Nonsense," said Miss Irma, determination marked in every line of her face. "We have a well-armed man on the premises. It is a house fit to stand a siege. Why, I turned away three score of them with a darning needle." "Not but what it is far more serious this time!" she said, a little sadly. By this time I was reassembling the scattered pieces of "King George's" armament, while Agnes Anne, in terror of her life, was searching on the floor and along the passages for things she had not lost. As soon as I had got over my first awe of Miss Irma, I asked her point-blank what was the danger, so that I might know what dispositions to take. I had seen the phrase in an old book, thin and tall, which my father possessed, called _Monro's Expedition_. But Irma bade me help to make the ground floor of the mansion as strong as possible, and then come up-stairs to the parlour, where she would tell me "all that it was necessary for me to know." I wished she had said "everything"--for, though not curious by nature, I should have been happy to be confided in by Miss Irma. To my delight, on going round I found that all the lower windows had been fitted with iron shutters, and these, though rusty, were in perfectly good condition. In this task of examination Miss Irma assisted me, and though I would not let her put a finger to the sharp-edged flaky iron, it was a pleasure to feel the touch of her skirt, while once she laid a hand on my arm to guide me to a little dark closet the window of which was protected by a hingeless plate of iron, held in position by a horizontal bar fitting into the stonework on either side. There was not so much to be done above stairs, where the shutters were of fine solid oak and easily fitted. But I sought out an oriel window of a tower which commanded the pillared doorway. For I did not forget what I had seen when the Great House of Marnhoul was besieged by the rabble of Eden Valley. It was there that the danger was if the house should be attempted. But I so arranged it, that whoever attacked the house, I should at least get one fair chance at them with "King George," our very wide-scattering blunderbuss. In the little room in which this window was, we gathered. It made a kind of watch-tower, for from it one could see both ways--down the avenue to the main road, and across the policies towards the path that led up from the Killantringan shore.