# Guy Mannering/Volume 2/Chapter 9

CHAPTER VII.
I renounce your defiance; if you parley so roughly I'll barricado my gates against you—Do you see yon bay window?
Storm,—I care not, serving the good Duke of Norfolk.
Merry Devil of Edmonton.
Julia Mannering to Matilda Marchmont.
"I rise from a sick-bed, my dearest Matilda, to communicate the strange and frightful scenes which have just passed. Alas! how little we ought to jest with futurity! I closed my letter to you in high spirits, with some flippant remarks on your taste for the romantic and the extraordinary in fictitious narrative. How little I expected to have had such events to record in the course of a few days! And to witness scenes of terror, or to ​contemplate them in description, is as different, my dearest Matilda, as to bend over the brink of a precipice holding by the frail tenure of a half-rooted shrub, or to admire the same precipice in the landscape of Salvator. But I will not anticipate my narrative.
"The first part of my story is frightful enough, though it had nothing to interest my feelings. You must know that this country is particularly favourable to the commerce of a set of desperate men from the Isle of Man, which is nearly opposite. These smugglers are numerous, resolute, and formidable, and have at different times become the dread of the neighbourhood, when any one has interterfered with their contraband trade. The local magistrates, from timidity or worse motives, are become shy of acting against them, and impunity has rendered them equally daring and desperate. With all this, my father, a stranger in the land, and invested with no official authority, ​had, one would think, nothing to do. But it must be owned, that, as he himself expresses it, he was born when Mars was lord of his ascendant, and that strife and bloodshed find him out in circumstances and situations the most retired and pacific.
"About eleven o'clock on last Tuesday morning, while Hazlewood and my father were proposing to walk to a little lake about three miles distance, for the purpose of shooting wild-ducks, and while Lucy and I were busied with arranging our plan of work and study for the day, we were alarmed by the sound of horses' feet, advancing very fast up the avenue. The ground was hardened by a severe frost, which made the clatter of the hoofs sound yet louder and sharper. In a moment two or three men, armed, mounted, and each leading a spare horse loaded with packages, appeared on the lawn, and without keeping upon the road, which makes a small sweep, pushed right across the lawn for the door of the house. ​Their appearance was in the utmost degree hurried and disordered, and they frequently looked back like men who apprehended a close and deadly pursuit. My father and Hazlewood hurried to the front door to demand who they were, and what was their business. They were revenue officers, they stated, who had seized these horses, loaded with contraband articles, at a place about three miles off. But the smugglers had been reinforced, and were now pursuing them with the avowed purpose of recovering the goods, and putting to death the officers who had presumed to do their duty. The men said, that their horses being loaded, and the pursuers gaining ground upon them, they had fled to Woodbourne, conceiving, that as my father had served the king, he would not refuse to protect the servants of government, when threatened to be murdered in the discharge of their duty.
"My father, to whom, in his enthusiastic feelings of military loyalty, even a dog ​would be of importance if he came in the king's name, gave prompt orders for securing the goods in the hall, arming the servants, and defending the house in case it should be necessary. Hazlewood seconded him with great spirit, and even the strange animal they call Sampson stalked out of his den and seized upon a fowling-piece, which my father had laid aside, to take what they call a rifle gun, with which they shoot tygers, &c. in the East. The piece went off in the awkward hands of the poor parson, and very nearly shot one of the excisemen. At this unexpected and voluntary explosion of his weapon, the Dominie (such is his nickname) exclaimed 'prodigious!' which is his usual ejaculation when astonished. But no power could force the man to part with his discharged piece, so they were content to let him retain it, with the precaution of trusting him with no ammunition. This (excepting the alarm occasioned by the report) escaped my ​notice at the time, you may easily believe; but in talking over the scene afterwards, Hazlewood made us very merry with the Dominie's ignorant but zealous valour.
"When my father had got every thing into proper order for defence, and his people stationed at the windows with their fire-arms, he wanted to order us out of danger—into the cellar, I believe—but we could not be prevailed upon to stir. Though terrified to death, I have so much of his own spirit, that I would look upon the danger which threatens us rather than hear it rage around me without knowing its nature or its progress. Lucy, looking as pale as a marble statue, and keeping her eyes fixed on Hazlewood, seemed not even to hear the prayers with which he conjured her to leave the front of the house. But, in truth, unless the hall-door should be forced, we were in little danger—the windows were almost blocked up with cushions and pillows, and, what the Dominie most lamented, with folio volumes, ​brought hastily from the library, leaving only spaces through which the defenders might fire upon the assailants.
"My father had now made his dispositions, and we sat in breathless expectation in the darkened apartment, the men remaining all silent upon their posts, in anxious contemplation probably of the approaching danger. My father, who was quite at home in such a scene, walked from one to another, and reiterated his orders, that no one should presume to fire until he gave the word. Hazlewood, who seemed to catch courage from his eye, acted as his aid-de-camp, and displayed the utmost alertness in bearing his directions from one place to another, and seeing them properly carried into execution. Our force, with the strangers included, might amount to about twelve men.
"At length the silence of this awful period of expectation was broken by a sound, which, at a distance, was like the rushing of a stream of water, but as it approached, ​we distinguished the thick-beating clang of a number of horses advancing very fast. I had arranged a loop-hole for myself, from which I could see the approach of the enemy. The noise increased and came nearer, and at length thirty horsemen and more rushed at once upon the lawn. You never saw such horrid wretches! Notwithstanding the severity of the season, they were most of them stripped to their shirts and trowsers, with silk handkerchiefs knotted about their heads, and all well armed with carbines, pistols, and cutlasses. I, who am a soldier's daughter, and accustomed to see war from my infancy, was never so terrified in my life as by the savage appearance of these ruffians, their horses reeking with the speed at which they had rode, and their furious exclainations of rage and disappointment when they saw themselves baulked of their prey. They paused, however, when they saw the preparations made ​to receive them, and appeared to hold a moment's consultation among themselves. At length, one of the party, his face blackened with gunpowder by way of disguise, came forward with a white handkerchief on the end of his carbine, and asked to speak with Colonel Mannering. My father, to my infinite terror, threw open a window near which he was posted, and demanded what he wanted. 'We want our goods which we have been robbed of by these sharks,' said the fellow; 'and our lieutenant bids me say, that if they are delivered, we'll go off for this bout without clearing scores with the rascals who took them; but if not, we'll burn the house, and have the heart's blood of every one in it;'—a threat which he repeated more than once, graced by a fresh variety of imprecations, and the most horrid denunciations that cruelty could suggest. 'And which is your lieutenant?' said my father in reply.
'That gentleman upon the grey horse,' ​said the miscreant, 'with the red handkerchief bound about his brow.'
'Then be pleased to tell that gentleman, that if he, and the scoundrels who are with him, do not ride off the lawn this instant, I will fire upon them without ceremony.' So saying, my father shut the window, and broke short the conference.
"The fellow no sooner regained his troop, than, with a loud hurra, or rather a savage yell, they fired a volley against our garrison. The glass of the windows was shattered in every direction, but the precautions already noticed saved the party within from suffering. Three such volleys were fired without a shot being returned from within. My father then observed them getting hatchets and crows, probably to assail the hall door, and called aloud, 'Let none fire but Hazlewood and I—Hazlewood, mark the ambassador.' He himself aimed at the man on the grey horse, who fell on receiving his shot.— ​Hazlewood was equally successful. He shot the spokesman, who had dismounted, and was advancing with an axe in his hand. Their fall discouraged the rest, who began to turn round their horses; and a few shots fired at them soon sent them off, bearing along with them their slain or wounded companions.—We could not observe that they suffered any farther loss. Shortly after their retreat a party of soldiers made their appearance, to my infinite relief. These men were quartered at a village some miles distant, and had marched upon the first rumour of the skirmish. A part of them escorted the terrified revenue officers and their seizure to a neighbouring sea-port as a place of safety, and at my earnest request two or three files remained with us for that and the following day, for the security of the house from the vengeance of these banditti.
"Such, dearest Matilda, was my first alarm. I must not forget to add, that the ​ruffians left, at a cottage on the road-side, the man whose face was blackened with powder, apparently because he was unable to bear transportation. He died in about half an hour after. Upon examining the corpse, it proved to be that of a boor in the neighbourhood, a person notorious as a poacher and smuggler. We received many messages of congratulation from the neighbouring families, and it was generally allowed that a few such instances of spirited resistance would greatly check the presumption of these lawless men. My father distributed rewards among his servants, and praised Hazlewood's courage and coolness to the skies. Lucy and I came in for a share of his applause, because we had stood fire with firmness, and had not disturbed him with screams or expostulations. As for the Dominie, my father took an opportunity of begging to exchange snuff-boxes with him. The honest gentleman was much flattered with the proposal, and ​extolled the beauty of his new snuff-box excessively. 'It looked,' he said, 'as well as if it were real gold from Ophir'—Indeed it would be odd if it should not, being formed in fact of that very metal; but, to do this honest creature justice, I believe the knowledge of its real value would not enhance his sense of my father's kindness, supposing it, as he does, to be pinchbeck gilded. He has had a hard task replacing the folios which were used in the barricade, smoothing out the creases and dogs-ears, and repairing the other disasters they have sustained during their service in the fortification. He brought us some pieces of lead and bullets which these ponderous tomes had intercepted during the action, and which he had extracted with great care; and, were I in spirits, I could give you a comic account of his astonishment at the apathy with which we heard of the wounds and mutilation suffered by Thomas Aquinas, or the venerable Chrysostom. But I ​am not in spirits, and I have yet another and a more interesting incident to communicate. I feel, however, so much fatigued with my present exertion, that I cannot resume the pen till to-morrow. I will detain this letter notwithstanding, that you may not feel any anxiety upon account of your own
"Julia Mannering."