After the first ball, whose execution Dorothy had witnessed, there came no more for some time.  Sir Trevor waited until the second battery should be begun and captain Hooper arrive, who was to be at the head of the mining operations.  Hence most of the inmates of the castle began to imagine that a siege was not such an unpleasant thing after all.  They lacked nothing; the apple trees bloomed; the moon shone; the white horse fed the fountain; the pigeons flew about the courts, and the peacock strutted on the grass.  But when they began digging their approaches and mounting their guns on the east side, sir Trevor opened his battery on the west, and the guns of the tower replied.  The guns also from the kitchen tower, and another between it and the library tower, played upon the trenches, and the noise was tremendous.  At first the inhabitants were nearly deafened, and frequently failed to hear what was said; but at length they grew hardened—­so much so that they were often unaware of the firing altogether, and began again to think a siege no great matter.  But when the guns of the eastern battery opened fire, and at the first discharge a round shot, bringing with it a barrowful of stones, came down the kitchen chimney, knocking the lid through the bottom of the cook’s stewpan, and scattering all the fire about the place; when the roof of one of the turrets went clashing over the stones of the paved court; when a spent shot struck the bars of the Great Mogul’s cage, and sent him furious, making them think what might happen, and wishing they were sure of the politics of the wild beasts; when the stones and slates flew about like sudden showers of hail; when every now and then a great rumble told of a falling wall, and that side of the court was rapidly turning to a heap of ruins; then were cries and screams, many more however of terror than of injury, to be heard in the castle, and they began to understand that it was not starvation, but something more peremptory still, to which they were doomed to succumb.  At times there would fall a lull, perhaps for a few hours, perhaps but for a few moments, to end in a sudden fury of firing on both sides, mingled with shouts, the rattling of bullets, and the falling of stones, when the women would rush to and fro screaming, and all would imagine the storm was in the breach.

But the gloom of the marquis seemed to have vanished with the breaking of the storm, as the outburst of the lightning takes the weight off head and heart that has for days been gathering.  True, when his house began to fall, he would look for a moment grave at each successive rumble, but the next he would smile and nod his head, as if all was just as he had expected and would have it.  One day when sir Toby Mathews and Dr. Bayly happened both to be with him in his study, an ancient stack of chimneys tumbled with tremendous uproar into the stone court.  The two clergymen started visibly, and then looked at each other with pallid faces.  But the marquis smiled, kept the silence for an instant, and then, in slow solemn voice, said: