“It is a good idea if we have time to carry it out, colonel.  We have still four or five hours’ daylight, and as I think that this is of even greater importance than the side walls, we will set the tenants to work at once, and it will save time if they take down the sacks, of which, as you say, we have an abundance.”

A few minutes later a dozen active boys left the castle, and scattered to various points on the hills around, so as to command a view over a considerable extent of country.  Soon after, some thirty carts went down the road accompanied by a number of men with shovels, and twenty of the garrison commanded by one of the old soldiers.  All returned loaded with sacks of earth; these were taken into the castle, when the portcullis was lowered and the drawbridge across the fosse raised.  An opening was left on the top to allow the sacks to be lowered into the space between the bridge and the portcullis.  A score of men with ropes went on to the wall above and lowered them behind the drawbridge, where five or six men stowed them away.  As soon as it became dark torches were lighted, and by ten o’clock a solid mass of sacks filled with earth were packed in the space between the portcullis and the drawbridge.

The night passed off quietly, the horses and carts remaining beyond the fosse.  Planks had been placed across one end of this, and the horses and carts taken over.  The horses were picketed round the castle, a supply of forage being placed there for their use, while the carts were packed closely by the fosse, so as to form an obstacle to any of the assailants who might try to pass.  At daybreak they were again run across the planks, the horses brought round and harnessed, the scouts being sent out as on the day before.  All day the work went on, and by nightfall two walls twenty feet long and eight feet high, bristling with pointed staves, were erected.  They stood some twenty feet back from the edge of the fosse, and extended from the wall to the verge of the precipice.  The carts and horses had, before the walls were built, been taken round to the back of the castle, where the plateau extended some fifty yards beyond the defences.  Evening was just coming on when the boys came in, two of them bringing a report that a great crowd of men could be seen approaching from the west.

MacIntosh, with thirty men, were at once lowered down from the battlements, and took up their places in an intrenchment which had been during the day thrown up at the point where the road came up to the plateau, while a score of the tenants assembled at the edge of the cliff, where great piles of blocks of stone had been collected in readiness to throw down.  Lighted torches were placed at intervals along the road, and three or four great cressets, holding balls of tow soaked in turpentine and oil, were set up on the edge of the plateau; these were to be lighted when the peasants attempted to mount the hill.