Giving no heed to the threat, Dick set up his clamor again, calling out his name, and bidding the old man open to a friend. In some notching of the hubbub I heard the unmistakable click of a gun-flint on steel. There was barely time to trip my reckless batterer and to fall flat with him on the door-stone when a gun went off within, and a handful of slugs, breaching the oaken panel at the height of a man's middle, went screeching over us. Before I knew what he would be at, Richard was up with an oath, backing off to hurl himself, shoulder on, against the door. It gave with a splintering crash, letting him in headlong. I followed less hastily. It was as black as a setter's mouth within, the gun fire having snuffed the old man's candle out. But we had flint and steel and tinder-box, and when the punk was alight, Jennifer found the candle under foot and gave it me. It took fire with a fizzing like a rocket fuse, and was well blackened with gunpowder. When the flint had failed to bring the firing spark, the old man had set his piece off with the candle flame. We found him in the nook made by the turn of the stair, flung thither, as it seemed, by the recoil of the great bell-mouthed blunderbuss which he was still clutching. The fall had partly stunned him, but he was alive enough to protest feebly that he would take a dozen oaths upon his loyalty to the cause; that he had mistook us for some thieving marauders of the other side; craftily leaving cause and party without a name till he should have his cue from us. Whereupon Richard loosed his neckcloth to give him better breathing space, and bidding me see if the revelers had left a heel-tap of wine in any bottle nearer than the wine cellar, lifted the old man and propped him in the corner of the high-backed hall settle. The wine quest led me to the banqueting-room. Here disorder reigned supreme. The table stood as the roisterers had left it; the very wreck and litter of a bacchanalian feast. Bottles, some with the necks struck off, were scattered all about, and the floor was stained and sticky with spilt wine and well sanded with shattered glass. I found a remnant draining in one of the broken bottles, and a cup to pour it in; and with this salvage from the wreck returned to Jennifer and his charge. The old man had come to some better sensing of things,--he had been vastly more frightened than hurt, as I suspected,--and to Richard's eager questionings was able to give some feebly querulous replies. "Yes, they're gone--all gone, curse 'em; and they've taken every plack and bawbee they could lay their thieving hands upon," he mumbled. "'Tis like the dogs; to stay on here and eat and drink me out of house and home, and then to scurry off when I'm most like to need protection." "But Madge?" says Richard. "Is she safe in bed?"