as one might know by the darkening of
the shaft. Then one saw the helm, for it was of leather, iron
bound, and had fallen rim upward, so that it floated. Now one was
going to swarm down the rope to get it, but as he swung the rope to
him, the bucket swayed in the water under the helm, and he saw that
it did so. Whereon he wound both up, and they too went away.

"That was a lucky chance!" I whispered.

"No chance at all, my son; that was surely done by the same Hand
that sent you here to warn us," answered the prior. And I think
that he was right.

Now came a whiff of biting smoke down the well shaft, borne by some
breath of wind that eddied into it. The Danes had fired the place!

"Father," I whispered, pulling the prior forward, for he had gone
into the little cell to give thanks for this last deliverance.

He looked very grave as he saw the blue haze across the doorway,
hiding the moss and a tiny fern that grew on the shaft walls over
against us.

"This is what I feared, though I must needs make light of it," he
said.

"It cannot harm us here," I answered.

"All round this court on three sides the buildings are of wood;
sheds and storehouses they are and of no account, but if one falls
across the well mouth--what then?"

"Then we are like to be stifled," said I; for even now the smoke
grew thicker, even so far down as we were. And when I looked out
and up there was naught but smoke across the well mouth, and with
that, sparks.

"Pent up and stifled both," said the quavering voice of the
sacristan from behind us. "How may we get out of this place till
men come and raise the ruin that will cover us? And who knows we
are here but ourselves?"

"Forgive me for bringing you to this pass," said the prior gravely,
after a little silence.

The smoke grew even denser, and we must needs cough, while the
tears ran from my eyes, for the stinging oak smoke seemed trapped
when once it was driven down the well.

"I have known men escape from worse than this," I said, thinking of
Lodbrok, and turning over many wild plans in my mind.

"I had forgotten this danger of wooden walls," said the prior to
himself, as it were. "Doubtless when this well chamber was made it
was without the inclosure."

Now it seemed to me that this could not be borne much longer, and
that soon the walls he dreaded would fall. So as one might as well
die in one way as another, I thought I would climb to the well's
mouth and see if there wer