But for all that, I never heard that he refused to partake of the anker of Guernsey which his lady found by chance in the milk-house among the creaming-pans, or by the tombstones of his predecessors in the "Ministers' Corner" of the kirkyard. I looked at the means of defence, and hidden among the packages at the back I found two good muskets and one or two very worn ones--yet all bearing the marks of recent attention. So, since the smuggled casks formed a kind of breastwork right round the steps--up from the passage that was blocked by the stone door--it came into my head that I could there set up a kind of battery and run from one to the other of them, firing--that is, if the worst came to the worst and the passage were forced. So, having plenty of powder and shot and the wrappings of the lace packages making excellent wads, I set about loading all the muskets. I knew that Agnes Anne would be afraid of what I was doing, having had a horror of firearms ever since, as a child, she had seen Florrie, our old dun cow, shot dead by Boyd Connoway to be our "mart" of the year, and salted down for the winter's food in the big beef barrel. Agnes Anne would never be induced to eat a bit of Florrie, though indeed she was very good and sweet, because forsooth she had been used to milk her and give her handfuls of fresh grass. Since then she had never forgiven Boyd Connoway, and had never been able to look upon a gun with any complaisance. Yet when I told her to stand back and keep away from the powder horn and the lantern (for it is none of the easiest to charge strange pieces in a dark cellar) she said that she would stand by "King George" while I was at hand--yes, and fire him off, too, if need were. Only I must show her how to pull the trigger, and also adjust the muzzle so as to bear on the steps by which the villains would come up! This I relate to show how (for the time being) Agnes Anne was worked upon. For, as all have seen, she was naturally of a very timorsome and quavering disposition. At any rate I did get the muskets, all five of them, loaded, and set in position with their noses cocked over the squared bulwarks of Mechlin and Vallenceens, of Strasburg yarn, and Italian silver-gilt wire. And I can tell you they looked imposing in the light of the lantern, though I was more than a little doubtful about some of them going off without blowing themselves up. But it was no time to cavil about small matters like that, and I said nothing about this to Agnes Anne, who, for her part, continued to glance along the barrel of "King George" at the stone door with the fixity of my father viewing a star through his large brass spy-glass. Only Agnes Anne, being unable to keep one eye shut and the other open, had to hold the lid of the unoccupied organ hard down with her left hand, as if it too were about to bounce out on us like the two men she had seen in the ice-house mound by the edge of the sunk fence.