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 leg, with attachment of tattered hose hanging here and there, followed.

Before the pistol could go off, Boris meanwhile waiting shrewdly for the appearance of a more vital part, a voice cried, “Stop!”

I looked about me, and there was the Lady Ysolinde come out of her chamber, with a dagger in her hand.  She was looking upward at the hole in the ceiling.

“For God’s sake, do not fire!” she cried; “tis only my poor Lubber Fiend.  Shame on me, that I had quite forgotten him all this time!”

At which, without turning away the muzzle, Boris put it a little aside, and waited for the disturber of brick-dust ceilings to reveal himself.  Which, when presently he did, a huge, grinning face appeared, pushing forward at first slowly and with difficulty, then, as soon as the ears had crossed the narrows of the pass, the whole head to the neck was glaring down and grinning to us.