[Both Sides the Border by G. A. Henty]@TWC D-Link bookBoth Sides the Border CHAPTER 10: A Breach Of Duty 17/33
We should have closely questioned some of the men, or those two women, and should have found means to learn whether they were staying here.
It may be that it was so, and that they are, even now, concealed in some secret hiding place, hard by." He at once called up several of his men, and set them to search every room in the turret, for some sign of an entrance to a secret chamber; but although the walls were all tapped, and the floors examined, stone by stone, no clue was found to such an entrance, if it existed. The house, which was built entirely of stone, offered no facilities for destroying it by fire.
The doors were all hewn down; the gates in the wall taken off their hinges, and thrown into the moat, being too massive to be destroyed by the arms of the soldiers.
The outlying buildings were all burned down, the vineyard rooted up, and the water turned out of the fish pond.
Then, greatly vexed at their failure to seize Glendower himself, the two nobles rode back to Chirk; leaving a hundred men, of whom the band from Ludlow formed part, under two of Earl Talbot's knights, to retain possession of the house, until it should be decided whether it should be levelled stone by stone; or left standing, to go, with the estate, to whomsoever the king might assign it. By Lord Grey's advice, sentries were posted outside the walls, from nightfall till daybreak, to prevent any risk of surprise by Glendower, whose spies might take him word that the main body of the assailants had left.
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