"
The men relaxed their cautious attitudes, and some grounded their
weapons; others began to talk in low voices; a small party advanced
nearer their leaders with weapons, axes and halberds, uplifted.
By now the blows were thundering on the door; and the same shattering
voice cried again and again:
"Open in the Queen's name; open in the Queen's name!"
The middle house of the three was unoccupied; but the windows of the
house next the stable, and the windows in the loft over the archway,
where the stable-boys slept, suddenly were illuminated; latches were
lifted, the windows thrust open and heads out of them.
Then one or two more pursuivants came up the dark passage bearing flaming
torches with them. A figure appeared on the top of the blank wall at the
end, and pointed and shouted. The stable-boys in a moment more appeared
in their archway, and one or two persons came out of the house next the
stable, queerly habited in cloaks and hats over their night-attire.
* * * *
The din was now tremendous; the questions and answers shouted to and fro
were scarcely audible under the thunder that pealed from the battered
door; a party had advanced to it and were raining blows upon the lock and
hinges. The court was full of a ruddy glare that blazed on the
half-armour and pikes of the men, and the bellowing and the crashes and
the smoke together went up into the night air as from the infernal pit.
It was a hellish transformation from the deathly stillness of a few
minutes--a massacre of the sweet night silence.
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