The leaguer was that night about the towers of Gambrevault, and the castle stood clasped betwixt the watch-fires and the sea. Fulviac's rebels, from evening until dawn, banked and staked a rampart to close the headland. From the north alone could Gambrevault be approached, south, east, and west to front the sea. Athwart the Fulviac drew his works, running from cliff to cliff, brown earth-banks with timber. , bombards, basilics, and great catapults had been brought from Gilderoy to the walls. Redoubts, covered by strong mantlets, were established in the meadows. Several small war guarded the castle on the side of the sea.  
Nor was this labour permitted to pass unrebuked before the leaguered folk upon the headland. There were sallies, assaults, in the , skirmishes upon the causeway. Yet these fiercenesses brought no flattering to the . The and men-at-arms were masterful enough with an open field to serve them, but behind their Fulviac's rebels held the advantage. The command went from Modred the seneschal that there were to be no more sorties delivered against the trenches.
 
On the second day of the leaguer the cannonade began. Bombard and flame and smoke; the huge catapults strove with their gigantic arms; arbalisters wound their windlasses behind the ramparts. Shot screamed and hurtled, crashed and thundered against the walls, bringing down mortar and in showers. The battlements of Gambrevault flame; their bows in bartisan and . A of dust and smoke about the place, the clamour of the siege sending the wheeling and from the cliffs.
 
On the very second day Flavian was brought low by a shot a fragment of masonry upon his and it to the bone. Stiff and faint, he was laid abed in his own state room, unable to stir for the twinging tendons, loth enough to lie idle. Modred, , lusty , took the command from him, and walked the walls. Hourly he came in to his lord's to tell of the cannonade and the state of the castle. Even Flavian from his cushions could see that the man's black face looked grim and .
 
"How do they us?" was his question, as the thunder came to them from the meadows.
 
Modred clinked his heels against the wainscotting of the window seat, and strove to sweeten his looks. He was not a man given to blandishing the truth.
 
"Their damned bombards are too heavy for us. We are dumb."
 
"Impossible!"
 
"Sire, we shall have to hold Gambrevault by the sword."
 
The man on the bed started up on his elbow, only to fall back again with a spasmodic of the forehead.
 
"And our bombards?" he asked.
 
"Are toppled off their trunnions."
 
"Ha!"
 
"For the rest, sire, I have ordered our men to keep cover. The bowmen shoot passably. The outer battlements are swept."
 
"And the walls?"
 
Modred and stroked his beard.
 
"There are cracks in the gate-house," quoth he, "that I could lay my fist in."
 
What goodlier fortune for a man than to lie when Love bears to him the bowl of dreams! What softer balm than the touch of a woman's hand! What more subtle music than her voice! The girl Yeoland had betrayed a new to the world, in that she now claimed as her guerdon the care of the man's heart. She was in and about his room, a shadow moving in the sunlight, a of youth, and very tender. Her eyes had a rarer , her face more of the dawn of the rose. Love stirred within her soul like the sound of angels psaltering on the golden battlements of heaven.
 
As she sat often beside him, Flavian won the whole romance from her, gradual as threads of silk drawn from a purse. She waxed very solemn over her tale, was timid at times, and exceeding sorrowful for all her passion. Some shadowy fear seemed to companion her beside the couch, some prophetic of a end. She loved the man, yet feared her love, even as it had been a sword above his head. compassed them like an angry sea; she heard the bombards thundering in the meadows.
 
"Ah, sire," she said to him one morning, as she thrust the flowers she had gathered in the garden into a bowl, "I am heavy at heart. Who shall pity me?"
 
He turned towards her on his cushions with a smile that was not prophetic of the tomb.
 
"Do I weary you?"
 
"Ah no, not that."
 
"Why then are you sad?"
 
She held up a white hand in the gloom of the room, her hair falling like a black cloud upon her .
 
"Listen," she said to him.
 
"I am not deaf."
 
"The thunder of war."
 
"Well, well, my heart,............