The fallen doorway, the blazing remnants of the settle, had set fire by now to the woodwork of the hall. Will ran through the heat and smoke of it, saw Rupert swaying dizzily half up the stair, and below him four Hessian troopers, one of whom was lifting a musket to his shoulder. He had his fowling-piece in hand, half-cocked by instinct when he left the duck-shooting for this scamper down the moor. He cocked it, and at the moment the trooper who was taking aim at Rupert turned sharply, hearing the din of feet behind, saw a press of men, white from head to foot, pouring through the doorway, and fired heedlessly at Underwood. And Will’s fowling-piece barked at the same moment; at six paces the charge of shot was compact and solid as a bullet, but the wound it made was larger, and not clean at all. The three troopers left faced round on the incoming company. They saw seven men, white in the linen coats they had not found thought or leisure to throw off, and sudden panic seized them. Through the stark waiting-time of their siege, with the moors and the sobbing winds to foster superstition, they had learned belief in ghosts, and thought they saw them now. They ran blindly for the doorway. Rupert leaped from the stair, and they were taken front and rear. When all was done, Rupert steadied himself, stood straight and soldierly, scanned the faces of his rescuers, and knew them all for friends. “My thanks, gentlemen,” he said, with tired courtesy. “You came in a good hour.” He leaned a hand on the Red Squire’s shoulder, wiped a trickle of blood from some chance wound that had touched his forehead, glanced round at them with dim, unseeing eyes. “Have I kept the house? Have I finished?” “The house is in our keeping now. You’ve done well, my lad,” said the red-faced squire, with gruff tenderness. “Then I’ll get to sleep, I think.” And he would have fallen, but the squire held him up and, putting two rough arms about him, carried him upstairs. “A well-plucked one,” he said, returning quickly. “And now, gentlemen, the house will be on fire, by your leave, if we don’t turn our hands to the pump.” Nance, watching from the shadows, was bewildered by the speed and fury of it all--bewildered more by the business-like, quiet way in which these linen-coated gentry went in and out of hall, carrying buckets and quenching the last smouldering flames with water from the stable yard. This was war--war, with its horror, its gallantry, its comedy; but it was not the warfare she had pictured when she sang heroic ballads at the spinet.