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Updated: May 3, 2025
But a stronger and more terrible characteristic of the period appeared in the market-place, which was a space of irregular width, half way betwixt the harbour, or pier, and the frowning castle-gate, which terminated with its gloomy archway, portcullis, and flankers, the upper end of the vista.
Here Balin alighted, and he and the damsel turned towards the castle, with purpose to enter. But as Balin entered in advance the portcullis was suddenly let fall behind him, cutting him off from his companion. Immediately a number of men assailed the damsel with drawn swords. When Balin saw this treacherous proceeding his soul burned within him. What to do at first he knew not.
For in that garth was neither knight nor squire nor sergeant; no spear-head glittered from the wall, no gleam of helm showed from the war-swales; no porter was at the gate; the drawbridge over the deep ghyll was down, the portcullis was up, and the great door cast wide open.
If you take a country walk anywhere in Normandy you find that the gardens of the country houses have massive gates and high walls, the front door is like a portcullis, and the window shutters are barricades. The smallest cottages have great doors and window shutters, and if there is a garden, it is two to one that the wall is a real wall.
The city was prosperous and rich, and if everybody was not comfortable, everybody else said he ought to be. When Curdie got up opposite the mighty rock, which sparkled all over with crystals, he found a narrow bridge, defended by gates and portcullis and towers with loopholes.
Dorothy leaned from her window, and looked sideways to the gate, expecting to see the marquis bending over his window-sill, and talking to Richard. But his window was close shut, nor was there any light behind it. A minute or two passed, during which she heard the combined discords of the rising portcullis. Then out came Eccles, slow and sleepy. 'By St. George and St.
The business is never to be accomplished by headlong assault. It must be done circumspectly, insidiously, a bit apologetically, pianissimo; there must be no flaunting of unusual ideas, no bold prancing of an unaccustomed personality. Above all, it must be done without exciting fear, lest the portcullis fall and the whole enterprise go to pot. Above all, the manner of a Jenkins must be got into it.
But unfortunately for them, so soon as the corporal had left his position, the wounded old gate-opener, in a dying condition, had crawled forth on his hands and knees from a dark hole in the tower, cut, with a pocket-knife, the ropes of the portcullis, and then given up the ghost. Most effective was that blow struck by a dead man's hand. Down came the portcullis.
He had maintained its quiet tones, yet perforce had had to rise to something of the dignity of this final pronouncement of the Prioress, and he spoke the last words with deep emotion. Hugh d'Argent leaned forward, his elbows on his knees; then dropped his head upon his hands, and so stayed motionless. The portcullis had fallen. Its iron spikes transfixed his very soul.
The drawbridge was lowered, the portcullis raised, and as all the dwellers in the Castle stood gathered in the court, in rode the warrior with the winged helm, bearing in his hand a drooping banner; lowering it as he entered, it unfolded, and displayed, trailing on the ground at the feet of the little Duke of Normandy, the golden lilies of France.
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