United States or Rwanda ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Roger crammed a powder-flask into one pocket with a handful of wadding, a bag of bullets into another, took his two guns, and went forth into the courtlage, in time to see a purple-faced man in an ill-fitting Dalmahoy wig climb off his horse and advance to the gate, with half a dozen retainers behind him. He tried the latch, and, finding it locked, began to shake the gate by the bars.
The sun was higher by some hours high enough to be streaming brightly over the wall into the courtlage at Sheba when Ruby awoke from a dreamless sleep. As she lifted her head from the pillow and felt the fatigue of last night yet in her limbs, she was aware also of a rich tenor voice uplifted beneath her window.
Posting ten men and a corporal to guard the charred remains of the camp, and two small bodies to patrol the road east and west of the house and to keep a portion of the defence busy in the courtlage, the lieutenant led the remainder of his force through an orchard divided from the south end of the house by a narrow lane, over which a barn abutted.
Stephen saw her legal adviser swung up by his collar and the seat of his breeches and hurled, still squealing, out upon the flagstones of the courtlage; saw him tumble sprawling, pick himself up, and flee for the gate without even waiting to pick up his wig or turning to shake his fist.
Rogers found and cautiously opened a wicket-gate leading to a courtlage, across which a solitary window shone on the ground-floor of a house lifting its gables and heavy chimneys against a sky only less black than itself. "Gad!" said Mr. Rogers softly, "I wonder what Whitmore's doing? The fun would be, now, to find one of these windows unfastened, and slip in upon him without announcing ourselves.
And your second thought if it suggested a second might be that these old yeomen, not content with a lonely dwelling in a lonely angle of the land, had churlishly built themselves in and away from sight even of the infrequent traveller; for a high wall enclosing a courtlage in front screens all but the upper story with its slated roof, heavy chimneys and narrow upper windows; and these again are half hidden by the boughs of two ragged yew trees growing within the enclosure.
With some vague notion that thereby he asserted possession, Roger had bought new padlocks and clapped them on all three gates the wrought-iron one admitting to the courtlage, the side wicket, and the great folding-doors of the stable-yard at the back. "Where's Joseph?" this was the farm-hind.
Close beside the next angle there grew a mass of thick gorse bushes, and pushing through these I found myself suddenly on a sound high-road, with the wind tearing at me as furiously as ever. But here was the front; and I now perceived that the surrounding wall advanced some way before the house, so as to form a narrow courtlage.
Only beware of dogs." Sure enough, when we reached the courtlage gate in front of the main building his lifting of the latch was the signal for half a dozen dogs to give tongue. By the mercy of heaven, however, they were all within doors or chained, and after an anxious and unpleasant half-minute we made bold to defy their clamour and step within the gate.
Then they headed eastward, and rode, Malachi and he, over the soundless turf and through the fog, breasting the moor together. At eight o'clock next morning one of these guns opened fire, and with its first shot ripped a breach through the courtlage wall. There came no answer. When the Sheriff, taking courage, rode up to summon the house, its garrison consisted of two women and one sleeping babe.