There was the tramp of many feet, and the surging of a crowd about and against the hall door.  Then a harsh, loud voice spoke: 

“Onst for all, will ye give him up, or shall we take him, and serve the rest of yez as bad?  Ye’ve got women there, too—­”

I will not add the rest of the threat for very shame.  I know it made me more wolfish than ever I thought it possible to feel, for I am a good-natured man in the main.  Mohun, who is not, bit his mustache furiously, and his voice shook a little as he answered,

“Do you ever say a prayer, Pierce Delaney?  You need one now.  If you live to see to-morrow’s sunset, I wish my right hand may wither at the wrist.”

A shrill howl pealed out from the assailants, and then the stout oak door cracked and quivered under the strokes of a heavy battering-beam; in a hundred seconds the hinges yielded, and it came clattering in; over it leaped three wild figures, bearing torches and pikes, but their chief, Delaney, was not one of them.

“The left-hand man is yours, Carew; Connell, take the middle one,” said Ralph, as coolly as if we had sprung a pack of grouse.  While he spoke his pistol cracked, and the right-hand intruder dropped across the threshold without a cry or a stagger, shot right through the brain.  The keeper and I were nearly as fortunate.  Then there was a pause; then a rush from without, an irregular discharge of musketry, and the clear part of the hall was crowded with enemies.

I can’t tell exactly what ensued.  I know they retreated several times, for the barricade was impassable; and while their shots fell harmlessly on the mattresses, every one of ours told—­nothing makes a man shoot straight like being short of powder—­but they came on again, each time with added ferocity.

I heard Mohun mutter more than once, in a dissatisfied tone, “Why does not that scoundrel show himself?  I can’t make out Delaney.”  All at once I heard a stifled cry on my right, and, to my horror, I saw Clontarf dragged over the balustrade in the gripe of a giant, whom I guessed at once to be the man we had looked for so long.  Under cover of the smoke, he had swung himself up by the balustrade of the staircase, and, grasping the poor boy’s collar as he looked out incautiously from his shelter, dropped back into the hall, carrying his victim with him.

With a roar of exultation the wild beasts closed round their prey.  Before I had time to think what could be done, I heard, close to my ear, a blasphemy so awful that it made me start even at that critical moment:  it was Ralph’s voice, but I hardly knew it—­hoarse and guttural, and indistinct with passion.  Without hesitating an instant, he swung himself over the balustrade, and lighted on his feet in the midst of the crowd.  They were half drunk with whisky, and maddened by the smell of blood; but—­so great was the terror of Mohun’s name—­all recoiled when they saw him thus face to face, his sword bare and