Page:Tudor Jenks--The defense of the castle.djvu/189

Rh picked up an enormous rock, as heavy as he could lift, from a pile that was just behind the ramparts.

"Oh, don't kill them!" cried Amabel.

"There will be no need," answered the Friar, and he tumbled the rock over the battlements. It went crashing through the bushes, bounded against a point of rock, dislodging a shower of earth and smaller stones, then shot downward, cutting its way through everything that opposed it until it fell with a great splash into the water, sending up a fountain of spray from the river.

"That will be enough, I think," the Friar remarked coolly, as he leaned to watch the result of his work. "If they come on in spite of that, I shall have no mercy. But they will not dare. It would be senseless folly. You alone could defend this path against an army, so long as there were stones here to roll down upon their heads."

Amabel, looking over, could see that the Friar was right, for the men were so eager to escape from their perilous position that they hardly were able to get out of one another's way. Indeed, just as they had succeeded in descending to within a few feet of the water, one of them lost his footing and tumbled on top of the man below him, so that both went rolling down the hill, and went souse! into the river below. There was no fear of that attack being followed up at once, and the