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.

An hour passed, and then a flame sprang up from a house and outbuildings
in the valley, lighting up the ground around and showing that a
great crowd was gathered on the road there.