I had hardly time to feel certain that they were removing one of these beams before I heard Shifty Dick say to Jerry.
"Which door ?" "The front," was the answer.

"We've cracked it already; we'll have it down now in no time." Senses less sharpened by danger than mine would have understood but too easily, from these words, that they were about to use the beam as a battering-ram against the door.

When that conviction overcame me, I lost courage at last.

I felt that the door must come down.

No such barricade as I had constructed could support it for more than a few minutes against such shocks as it was now to receive.
"I can do no more to keep the house against them," I said to myself, with my knees knocking together, and the tears at last beginning to wet my cheeks.