rst one and then the other.

"Swift!" he said, as he threw down the second corpse. "Shut the
door. I caught sight of horsemen riding through the trees. Nay,
they saw nothing."

So they locked the massive door and barred it, and with beating
hearts waited in the dark, expecting every moment to hear
soldiers battering at its timbers. But no sound came; the
searchers, if such they were, had passed on to seek elsewhere.

Now while Wulf made shift to fasten up the horses near the mouth
of the cave, Godwin gathered stones as large as he could lift,
and piled them up against the door, till they knew that it would
take many men an hour or more to break through.

For this door was banded with iron and set fast in the living
rock.

Chapter Fifteen: The Flight to Emesa

Then came the weariest time of waiting the brethren had ever
known, or were to know, although at first they did not feel it so
long and heavy. Water trickled from the walls of this cave, and
Wulf, who was parched with thirst, gathered it in his hands and
drank till he was satisfied. Then he let it run upon his head to
cool its aching; and Godwin bathed such of his brother's hurts
and bruises as could be come at, for he did not dare to remove
the hauberk, and so gave him comfort.

When this was done, and he had looked to the saddles and
trappings of the horses, Wulf told of all that had passed between
him and Lozelle on the bridge. How at the first onset his spear
had caught in the links of and torn away the head-piece of his
foe, who, if the lacings had not burst, would have been hurled to
death, while that of Lozelle struck his buckler fair and
shattered on it, rending it from his arm. How they pushed past
each other, and for a moment the fore hoofs of Smoke hung over
the abyss, so that he thought he was surely sped: How at the next
course Lozelle's spear passed beneath his arm, while his,
striking full upon Sir Hugh's breast, brought down the black
horse and his rider as though a thunderbolt had smitten them, and
how Smoke, that could not check its furious pace, leapt over
them, as a horse leaps a-hunting: How he would not ride down
Lozelle, but dismounted to finish the fray in knightly fashion,
and, being shieldless, received the full weight of the great
sword upon his mail, so that he staggered back and would have
fallen had he not struck against the horse.

Then he told of the blows that followed, and of his last that
wounded Lozelle, shearing