homes. Ducks, geese, and hens walked about unconcernedly looking for any
stray grains that had passed unnoticed when they had last been fed, and a
chorus of dissatisfied grunting arose from the pigs that had a large pen
in the yard next to the huts. These were still smarting under a sense of
injury excited not only by their removal from their familiar haunts, but
by the fact that most of them had been hastily marked by a clipping of
some kind in the ear in order to enable their owners to distinguish them
from the others. Boys were carrying buckets of water from a well in the
court-yard to the troughs for the cattle and horses, and the men-at-arms
were cleaning their armour and polishing their steel caps.

"Well, Tom, I hope we shall get on as well to-night as we did this
morning," Guy said to the leader of the archers.

"I hope so, Master Guy, but I would rather fight by day than by night; it
is random work when you can neither see your mark nor look straight along
your arrow. If we had a moon we should do well enough, but on these dark
nights skill does not go for much; still, I doubt not that we shall give a
good account of ourselves, for at any rate we shall be able to make them
out before they come to close work. The women have been making a great
store of torches to-day, and that will help us a bit, though I would that
they could be planted fifty yards beyond the moat instead of on the walls,
for although they will be of some use to us they will be of even more to
the enemy. What think you that their plan will be?"

"I should say that they are intending to march forward covered by mantlets
of wattles and hides. They will plant them near the edge of the moat, and
throw up some earthworks to shelter them and their machines; no doubt they
will use the doors they have fetched from all the farmhouses for the same
purpose."