Heralding their attack by a discharge from their muskets, whose balls whistled harmlessly round the tower, the peasants rushed forward to the door and commenced an assault upon it with hatchets and axes.

Malcolm and his men each lifted a heavy stone and rolled it over the parapet, the five loosing the missiles simultaneously.  There was a dull crash, and with a terrible cry the peasants fled from the door.  Looking over, Malcolm saw that six or seven men had been struck down.  Five of these lay dead or senseless; two were endeavouring to drag themselves away.

“That is lesson number one,” he said.  “They will be more prudent next time.”

The peasants, after holding a tumultuous council, scattered, most of them making for a wood a short distance off.

“They are going to cut down a tree and use it as a battering ram,” Malcolm observed.  “They know that these large stones are too heavy for us to cast many paces from the foot of the wall.  We must get to work and break some of them up.  That will not be difficult, for the wind and weather have rotted many of them half through.”

The stones were for the most part from two to three feet long and nine or ten inches square.  Two were laid down on the platform some eighteen inches apart and another placed across them.  The four men then lifted another stone, and holding it perpendicularly brought it down with all their strength upon the unsupported centre of the stone, which broke in half at once.  To break it again required greater efforts, but it yielded to the blows.  Other stones were similarly treated, until a large pile was formed of blocks of some ten inches each way, besides a number of smaller fragments.

In half an hour the peasants reappeared with a slight well grown tree some forty feet long which had been robbed of its branches.  It was laid down about fifty yards from the church, and then twenty men lifted it near the butt and advanced to use it as a battering ram, with the small end forward; but before they were near enough to touch the door the bearers were arrested by a cry from the crowd as the defenders appeared on the tower, and poising their blocks of stone above their heads, hurled them down.  Three of them flew over the heads of the peasants, but the others crashed down among them, slaying and terribly mutilating two of the bearers of the tree and striking several others to the ground.  The battering ram was instantly dropped, and before the Scotchmen had time to lift another missile the peasants were beyond their reach.

“Lesson number two,” Malcolm said.  “What will our friends do next, I wonder?”

The peasants were clearly at a loss.  A long consultation was held, but this was not followed by any renewal of the attack.

“I think they must have made up their minds to starve us out, sir,” the sergeant remarked as the hours went slowly by without any renewal of the attack.