By this time, the royalist soldiers were close at hand, and the features of their two leaders, John Braddyll and Richard Assheton, could be plainly distinguished, and their voices heard.
"'Tis he! 'tis the rebel abbot!" vociferated Braddyll, pressing forward.
"We were not misinformed.

He has been watching by the beacon.

The devil has delivered him into our hands." "Ho! ho!" laughed Demdike.
"Abbot no longer--'tis the Earl of Poverty you mean," responded Assheton.

"The villain shall be gibbeted on the spot where he has fired the beacon, as a warning to all traitors." "Ha, heretics!--ha, blasphemers!--I can at least avenge myself upon you," cried Paslew, striking spurs into his charger.

But ere he could execute his purpose, Demdike had sprung backward, and, catching the bridle, restrained the animal by a powerful effort.
"Hold!" he cried, in a voice of thunder, "or you will share their fate." As the words were uttered, a dull, booming, subterranean sound was heard, and instantly afterwards, with a crash like thunder, the whole of the green circle beneath slipped off, and from a yawning rent under it burst forth with irresistible fury, a thick inky-coloured torrent, which, rising almost breast high, fell upon the devoted royalist soldiers, who were advancing right in its course.