Lempriere made haste to remove his wife and their sister from the noisy alarms of war to their quiet home at Maufant, where he left them to remove the traces of the usurper, and restore the old state of things with the help of the steward and such of the farmers as had not died out or left the country.  One consequence of this removal was that Le Gallais saw nothing of the ladies.  His new duties kept him much at the Brigadier’s side; when not so employed, he was chiefly occupied with Prynne, who was attracted by the turn of the young man’s mind, more akin to his own than that of the “hot gospellers,” the “levellers,” and the professional soldiers by whom he was surrounded.

Meanwhile, the siege dragged slowly on, until one dark night in the end of November an old acquaintance, Pierre Benoist, threw himself in the way of a party of Carteret’s scouts, who had come on the mainland and were questing for intelligence or plunder.  Taken before Sir George, he was threatened with the doom of a prisoner-of-war, who was also a spy, unless he would tell all that he knew.  He asked for nothing better, having got himself taken by the patrol for the express purpose of furnishing the garrison grounds for an early surrender.  Especially pleased was the rogue when the Lieutenant-Governor pressed him to explain the nature of a movement of the enemy upon the top of the Town-hill, which had been perceived before nightfall; and of the cargo landed at S. Aubin by a heavy-looking craft that had arrived in the morning, and which seemed neither man-of-war nor trader.

“That I can tell you,” said Benoist; “they are preparing engines for your ruin.  I saw the pieces landed, and drawn by oxen to the Mont de la Ville.  Two pieces of ordnance whereof each shot weighs four hundred Jersey pounds, and takes ten pounds of powder to discharge.  The like has never been seen, and they will carry a ball from Mont Orgueil to the coast of Prance. Ver di!”

Carteret laughed; but his laughter was only justified by the exaggeration.  It did not altogether conceal the genuine anxiety caused by so much of the information as might be reasonably believed.

The anxiety was soon realised.  When the mists of the winter dawn cleared up, it was seen that a strong work of granite had been newly thrown up on the nearest point of the hill, and while the besieged were still examining the structure, a vivid jet of flame and a puff of smoke darted from one of the embrasures, and a thirteen-inch shell—­the largest projectile then seen—­came booming over their astonished heads.  Two more followed, at short intervals.  After the third, an awful report was heard, a babel of tumult followed, and a gigantic column of smoke towered up behind them, from the magazine in the old Abbey Church.  Splinters and fragments of stone and timber, mingled with pieces of powder, barrels, and ghastly members of human carcases were scattered, as they rose as out of a horrid volcano.  The magazine had been struck and exploded by the great shell, killing no less than sixteen men, and wounding horribly ten others, including soldiers on guard, armourers, and workmen who had been collected for the daily labours of the arsenal.  Among the bystanders was Pierre Benoist, who now lay among the ruins, half crushed by a stone, and who died after intense suffering in the course of the day.