From the east side of the tower which looks to the sea, there came the sound of a loud report, a tumble of stones, and then a loud, continual, and most pitiful crying, as of a man hurt unto death. I ran up into the battlements above and set my head through a loophole. Beneath me lay a fine-looking young man, with his red bonnet fallen aside, clad in a short white coat, with doublet and hose also of red. He was unarmed so far as I could see. ’Who are you, and what brought you there?’ I cried to him from the turret loop. A massy corner-stone fallen from the castle lay on his chest, and a pile of other rocks and stones was heaped about his legs. He turned his eyes upward at me and tried twice to speak. At last he said, with many pants and piteous groans, ’I am Allan Crosby, from Auchneil. I brought you a letter from my Lord Cassillis. I landed below and came up by the path, but when I got near I heard firing and saw the door shut. So I tried to clamber up the castle wall to cry in at the window to you, because you were my friends. And even as I climbed, the stones of the castle fell upon me, and now they are crushing the life out of me.’ ’Where is the letter from my Lord?’ said I. The man cast his eyes about him as if to look for it. ’I had it in my hand just now,’ he said. I saw a scrap of parchment a little way from him, and asked if that were the letter. ’Tie it to a cord for me,’ said I, ’that I may see it.’ But, by reason of his wounds, he was not able to reach it, and the stones pressed so bitterly on his breast that he could do nothing but lie and groan most waesomely. ’Oh, help me, or else end my misery—for the love of God,’ he cried earnestly, ’for I am at the point of death in this agony.’ I went all round the top of the tower and looked about every way. Our enemies had retired further up the cliff, and were contenting themselves with firing an occasional shot, which fell harmless against the walls, buzzed among the battlements, or else sang past us into the sea. I called the Dominie. ’Come to the door,’ said I. ’I cannot bide still and see that poor man suffer. He says that he has come with a letter from my Lord Cassillis. It may be so. I will at least go and see. Drummurchie’s thieves have gone up the face of the rock, and the wounded man cannot hurt me much, even if he were willing.’ Then the Dominie pled with me to bide where I was ’because,’ said he, ’you know not whether it be not an ambush.’ ’I cannot let a fellow-creature be crushed to pieces before my eyes and abide to hear his death-cries,’ I answered. ’Come down and hold you the door open.’