Again I explained the difficulty.

“Ain’t very proper-spoke,” said D’ri, apologetically.  “Jest wan’t’ say et them ‘air guns er likely t’ come handy here ’most any minute.  Give us guns, ‘n’ we ’ll sock it to ’em.”

“We shall sock it to them, we shall indeed,” said she, hurrying out of the room.  “We shall make them to run for their lives.”

They were all in the dining room—­the men of the party—­save the general, who could not he awakened.  Guns and pistols were loaded.  I made a novel plan of defence that was unanimously approved.  I posted a watch at every window.  A little after dawn the baroness, from behind a curtain, saw a squad of horsemen coming through the grove.

“Ici! they have come!” said she, in a loud whisper.  “There are not four; there are many.”

I took my detail of six men above-stairs.  Each had a strip of lumber we had found in the shop, and each carefully raised a window, waiting the signal.  I knew my peril, but I was never so cool in my life.  If I had been wiser, possibly I should have felt it the more.  The horsemen promptly deployed, covering every side of the mansion.  They stood close, mounted, pistol and sabre ready.  Suddenly I gave the signal.  Then each of us thrust out the strip of lumber stealthily, prodding the big drab cones on every side.  Hornets and wasps, a great swarm of them, sprang thick as seeds from the hand of a sower.  It was my part to unhouse a colony of the long, white-faced hornets.  Goaded by the ruin of their nests, they saw the nodding heads below them, and darted at man and horse like a night of arrows.  They put their hot spurs into flank and face and neck.  I saw them strike and fall; they do hit hard, those big-winged Vespae.  It was terrible, the swift charge of that winged battalion of the air.  I heard howls of pain below me, and the thunder of rushing feet.  The horses were rearing and plunging, the men striking with their hats.

I heard D’ri shouting and laughing at his window.

“Give ’em hell, ye little blue devils!” he yelled; and there was all evidence that they understood him.

Then, again, every man of us opened his window and fired a volley at the scurrying mass.

One horse, rearing and leaping on his hind legs, came down across the back of another, and the two fell heavily in a rolling, convulsive heap.  One, as if blinded, bumped a tree, going over on his withers, all fours flashing in the air.  Some tore off in the thickets, as unmanageable as the wild moose.  More than half threw their riders.  Not a man of them pulled a trigger:  they were busy enough, God knows.  Not one of them could have hit the sky with any certainty.  I never saw such a torrent of horsehair and red caps.

“Whut!  Been on the back o’ one o’ ’em hosses?” said D’ri, telling of it a long time after. “‘D ruther o’ been shet up ’n a barrel with a lot o’ cats ‘n’ rolled downhill.  Good deal better fer my health, an’ I ’d ‘a’ luked more like a human bein’ when I come out.  Them fellers—­they did n’t luk fit t’ ‘sociate with nuthin’ er nobody when we led ’em up t’ the house—­nut one on ’em.”