I drove the
rabble before me--the men of them, I mean. I felt my terrible weapon
stopped now and then--now softly, now suddenly, according to that which I
struck against. And all the while the kitchen of the inn resounded with
yells and threatenings, with oaths and cursings.

But Jorian and I drove them steadily back, though they came at us again
and again, with spits, iron hooks, and all manner of curious weapons.
Also from out of the corners we saw the gleaming, watchful eyes of a dark
huddle of women and children. Presently the clamorous rabble turned tail
suddenly and poured through the door out upon the pathway, quicker than
water through a tide-race in the fulness of the ebb.

And lo! in a moment the room was sucked empty, save only for the huddled
women in the corners, who cried and suckled their children to keep them
still. And some of the wounded with the axe and the sword crawled to them
to have their ghastly wounds bound. For an axe makes ugly work at the
best of times, and still worse on the edges of such a pagan fight as we
three had just fought.

So we went back victorious to our inner doors.

Then Jorian looked at me and nodded across at Boris.

"Good!" was all that he said. But the single word made me happier than
many encomiums.

In spite of all, however, we were no nearer than before to getting away
that I could see. For there was still all that long, desperate traverse
of the defile before we could guide our horses to firm ground again. But
while I was thinking bitterly of my first night's sleep (save the mark!)
away from the Red Tower, I heard something I knew not the meaning of--the
beginning of a new attack, as I judged.

It sounded like a scraping and a crumbling somewhere above.

"God help us now, Jorian!" I cried, in a sudden, quick panic; "they are
coming upon us everyway. I can hear them stripping off the roof-tile
overhead--if such rabbit-warrens as this have Christian roofs!"

Boris sat down calmly with his back against the earthen wall and
trained his pistol upward, ready to shoot whatever should appear.
Presently fragments of earth and hardened clay began to drop on the
pounded floor of the corridor. I heard the soft hiss of the man-at-arms
blowing up his match, and I waited for the crash and the little heap of
flame from the touch.

Suddenly a foot, larger than that of mortal, plumped through our ceiling
of brick-dust and a huge scatterment of earth tumbled down. A great bare