Page:Tudor Jenks--The defense of the castle.djvu/290

262 against it, they were interrupted. Instead of the stone rampart that ran elsewhere along behind the battlements, here a wooden bridge was substituted. Consequently, when the rampart fell into the hands of the besiegers, it was a matter of but a few moments to burn or cut away the wooden bridge, leaving a wide gap before reaching the keep.

The fall of the southeastern tower left only the keep and the tower at the northwestern angle in possession of the defenders, and the ease with which they had taken the first small tower now urged them to an attack upon the last, hoping to confine the survivors of the garrison—now reduced to about fifty men—to the keep alone.

The Count proposed to Luke to burn down the tower they had just captured, but upon Luke's suggestion that they would soon be in possession of the whole edifice and would then have to rebuild much that they had destroyed, the Count desisted, and contented himself with putting a force of his own in charge of its defenses.

The prisoners, having been disarmed, were sent away towards the Count's camp under guard, until the Count should determine what to do with them. Although he had threatened to give no quarter, and although, if left to himself, he might have carried out his threat, Luke had pointed out to him that such unnecessary cruelty was unwise and