The sounds came from the churchyard, but I doubt if even a company of good Welsh ghosts would have frightened us as much as these earthly foreigners. Very, very earthly and carnal-minded did they seem to us at this moment. “They won’t come into a church—they won’t rob a church!” I whispered to Ann, leaning my head down close to her’s—a difficult feat, but I was as thin as a lath then. “Won’t they?” said Ann, scornfully. “You wait a minute—Hst!” Nan’s appreciation of character and computation of time proved equally correct. She had fixed the pew-door by this time, and she held it firmly in its place by the handle, which she had taken care to put on the inward side when she lifted up the barrier across the entrance to the stair. “I hope they won’t fire through that like they did through the clock at Brestgarn, on the chance of finding some one behind it,” I whispered to my companion as this comfortable idea flashed through my mind, even the terror of the French failing to curb my natural love of suggesting a terror. “Hst!” retorted Nan; “hold your tongue, can’t you, and keep your head down; don’t let them see you peeping, Dan!” Nancy’s caution to me came not a moment too soon, for crash! a rush of men and muskets at the door, whose rickety bolts we had drawn when we entered, chiefly in the hope that they might not be tried. But if we drew them as a sort of charm, the spell was not strong enough, nor were the locks. C-r-a-ck—_crack_! the feeble bolts gave a groan, and open flew the door with a sharp, splitting sound. In rushed ten or a dozen Frenchmen, tumbling over one another in their haste. The church was lighted up with a sudden blaze from their torches; this was all I saw, for on the entrance of the enemy I had ducked my head speedily. Ann could see still less, as she was crouched on the bottom step, and was keeping the door in its place with her knees. The noise in the church was terrific, but yet to my ears the beating of my heart was still louder. The more I tried to silence it, the more it ticked. “Perhaps they’ll think it’s a clock,” I reflected. “Oh, dear! oh, dear!”