“I feel sure that they will not do so.  You see, they relied upon their cannon for taking the chateau, and they find they are useless.  I am going to make a sortie before daybreak, for I want to capture those cannon.  So long as they hold them they will continue their work, and they may not always meet with so stout a resistance.  The loss of their cannon will dishearten them, as well as lessen their power for evil.  I shall take every man who can carry arms, and leave ten at the breastwork to defend it; but there is no chance whatever of their attempting to come up here while we are attacking them, so you need have no fear.”

“We shall not be afraid, Colonel Campbell, our confidence in you is absolute; but do you not think that you are running a great risk in attacking a force some forty times as large as your own?”

“One cannot call it a force, it is simply a mob, and a mob that has suffered a terrible repulse, and the loss of three or four hundred men tonight.  We shall take them by surprise.  I am going to mount all the tenants.  MacIntosh tells me that they have all been drilled as cavalry as well as infantry.  He, with the twenty men of the regular garrison on foot and ten of the tenants, will make straight for the guns.  I shall be with the horsemen, and as soon as we have scattered the mob, we will harness the horses to the guns and bring them up here, so that I shall strengthen the castle as well as weaken the peasants.”

The tenants were all informed of what was going to be done.

“It will be to your benefit as well as ours,” he said, “for you may be sure that in the morning, if they give up the idea of again attacking us, they will scatter all over the estates and sack and burn every house, whereas if we succeed in dispersing them, no small portion of them will at once scatter to their homes, and the rest will take care not to come near this neighbourhood again.”

At twelve o’clock MacIntosh sent a man to say that the road down was clear, and that three hundred and twenty dead bodies had been thrown over.  At three o’clock in the morning the horses, round whose hoofs pieces of sacking had been tied, were led across the fosse.  One of MacIntosh’s sergeants was put in charge of the ten men who were to remain at the intrenchment, the castle being left entirely in the hands of the women and boys.  The mounted tenants were eighty in number, all carrying long spears and swords.  The torches had long since burnt out, and each man leading his horse went noiselessly down the road, MacIntosh with the footmen leading the way.  They halted at the bottom of the road.  There was no sound from the spot where the insurgents were lying a couple of hundred yards down the valley, fatigued by a very long march on the previous day, and the exertion of dragging the cannon, for only a few of these were horsed.  Presently the day began to break, but not until it became light enough to see perfectly, did Hector give the order to mount, and leaping into the saddle prepared to lead them.