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There was a sharp tussle in the garden; blows were given and taken in the dark; arrows shot at a venture; torches thrust into hairy faces. Gaillard’s men-at-arms in their heavy mail, for they had lain down armed to sleep, were more than a match for the woodlanders in their leather jerkins. Soon—scampering shadows went away into the moonlight. Gaillard and his men were left to put out the fire about the porch.

And savage men they were, men with the hot flare of that death trap in their nostrils. The two sentinels had been stalked and killed, and the brushwood piled against the door. The windows were so narrow that men could have been shot while struggling through them. The flames and smoke would have leapt in, making the place a hell of plunging, terrified beasts, and mad and half-dazed men.

Gaillard watched his fellows trampling on the brushwood. Now and again an arrow came whistling out of the moonlight.

“We will pay them for this,” he said grimly. “God, but they meant to burn us like blind mice in a stack!”