Driscoll!  Are you gone mad?  Stand you back from that door!

(Thrusts DRISCOLL from the door.)

DRISCOLL (half delirious).  Let me forth!  The spring—­’tis just below—­there on the river-bank!  Let me slip down to it—­but a moment—­and drink!

JOHN TALBOT.  Cromwell’s soldiers hold the spring.

DRISCOLL.  I care not!  Let me forth and drink!  Let me forth!

JOHN TALBOT.  ’T would be to your death.

BUTLER.  And what will he get but his death if he stay here,
Captain Talbot?

DRISCOLL (struggling with JOHN TALBOT).  I’m choked!  I’m choked, I tell ye!  Let me go, Jack Talbot!  Let me go!

NEWCOMBE (still half-asleep, rises to his knees, with a terrible cry, and his groping hands upthrust to guard his head).  God’s pity!  No! no! no!

DRISCOLL (shocked into sanity, staggers back, crossing himself). 
God shield us!

BUTLER.  Silence that whelp!

FENTON.  Clear to the rebel camp they’ll hear him!

JOHN TALBOT (catching NEWCOMBE by the shoulder).  Newcombe!  Kit
Newcombe!

NEWCOMBE.  Ah, God!  Keep them from me!  Keep them from me!

JOHN TALBOT.  Ha’ done!  Ha’ done!

NEWCOMBE.  Not that!  Not the butt of the muskets!  Not that!  Not that!

JOHN TALBOT (stifling NEWCOMBE’S outcry with a hand upon his mouth).  Wake!  You’re dreaming!

DRISCOLL.  ’Tis ill luck!  ’Tis ill luck comes of such dreaming!

NEWCOMBE.  Drogheda!  I dreamed I was at Drogheda, where my brother—­my brother—­they beat out his brains—­Cromwell’s men—­with their clubbed muskets—­they—­

(Clings shuddering to JOHN TALBOT.)

FENTON.  English officers that serve amongst the Irish—­’t is thus that Cromwell uses them!

BUTLER.  English officers—­aye, like ourselves!

JOHN TALBOT.  Be quiet, Kit!  You’re far from Drogheda—­here at the Bridge of Cashala.

BUTLER.  Aye, safe in Cashala Gatehouse, with five hundred of
Cromwell’s men sitting down before it.

JOHN TALBOT.  Keep your watch, Butler!

NEWCOMBE.  You give orders?  You still command, Jack?  Where’s
Captain Talbot, then?

(Snatches up his sword and rises.)

BUTLER (quitting the window).  Aye, where is Captain
Talbot?

JOHN TALBOT.  You say—­

FENTON (rising).  We all say it.

JOHN TALBOT.  Even thou, Dick?

DRISCOLL.  He does not come!  Hugh Talbot does not come!

FENTON.  He bade us hold the bridge one day.  We’ve held it three days now.

BUTLER.  And where is Hugh Talbot with the aid he promised?

JOHN TALBOT.  He promised.  He has never broken faith.  He will bring us aid.

FENTON.  Aye, if he be living!

DRISCOLL.  Living?  You mean that he—­Och, he’s dead!  Hugh Talbot’s dead!  And we’re destroyed!  We’re destroyed!