WHAT PASSED AT CRANWELL A week had gone by.

For the first three days of that time little of note had happened at Cranwell Towers; that is, no assault was delivered.
Only Christopher and his dozen or so of house-servants and small tenants discovered that they were quite surrounded.

Once or twice some of them rode out a little way, to be hunted back again by a much superior force, which emerged from the copses near by or from cottages in the village, and even from the porch of the church.

With these men they never came to close quarters, so that no lives were lost.

In a fashion this was a disadvantage to them, since they lacked the excitement of actual fighting, the dread of which was ever present, but not its joy.
Meanwhile in other ways things went ill with them.