“Whee!” Billy was saying half to himself as he stared at the bustling scene, “but wouldn’t it be great if only we’d been asked to put on some suits like those fellows are wearing, and have a chance to climb up the ladders?  I bet you now we’d show them how to break through, no matter what the men on the walls tried to put on us.  But shucks! that’d be too big luck; and besides, it could hardly be fair for us boys to steal the thunder of those hard-working actors.  There, he’s going to give the signal for the mimic war to begin.  Everybody take a big breath and sail in!  Now, go it, you terriers; the battle’s on again!”

CHAPTER X

The assault on the “Castle.”

“Yes, there goes the signal!” burst from the excited Alec, as they saw the manager suddenly raise his hand, and fire a revolver three times in quick succession.

Immediately everybody seemed to get busy at once.  Most of the battle-scarred veterans, who knew their business so well, started in just about where the last stirring scene had left off.  Possibly those who had been “killed” in the former desperate assault had found time to come mysteriously to life again, leaving a dummy in their stead to be ruthlessly trampled on, now assumed new places in the ranks, to make the assailants and defenders look more like a veritable “host.”

The scouts held their breath in very awe.  What they were looking at was indeed quite enough to make any one do that.  Certainly no such remarkable scene had ever before been “set” since those actual days when Crusaders and Saracens met in mortal combat on the plains of the Holy Land, and knights went forth to battle in joust and tournament wearing a fair lady’s glove on their helmet as a talisman for luck.

Of course Hugh, as well as most of his young companions, had read some of the romantic works of Sir Walter Scott, and were familiar with his vivid descriptions of just such warlike pictures as they now saw delighted Hugh, indeed, was of the opinion that it might be one of these that the famous players of the motion picture world were now acting, and the name of “Ivanhoe” was uppermost in his mind as he watched the progress of the furious battle.

There were women folks in the castle, too, for occasionally they could be seen frantically spurring their defenders on to renewed exertions.  Others may have been playing the part of prisoners, for the boys discovered a white handkerchief waving from a window in one of the turrets, as though to encourage the assailants in their work.  Perhaps this was Rebecca in her cell, Hugh thought.

All of this just about suited the imagination of red-blooded boys as proper and right.  It had been virtually going on ever since the world began, and would in all probability endure so long as men lived on this planet.

Now and then, when one of the scouts discovered something that particularly interested him, and to which he wished to draw the attention of his mates, he found it necessary to fairly bawl the fact, so as to be heard above the wild clamor.