who could save him from discovery now.

The officers came groping towards him up the narrow passage.

Before the candle-light reached him, he rose and got behind the
barrel, there being barely room for his legs between it and the
partition. He had, in dressing for the day, put on his scabbard and
his broken sword. He now took his stick in his left hand, and drew his
sword with his right. He set his teeth hard together, thought of
nothing at all, or rather of everything at once, and waited.

"Hear the rats," said one of the Englishmen. It was Peyton's stealthy
movement he had heard.

"Ay, sir, there's often a terrible scampering of 'em," said Williams.

"Maybe I can pink a rat or two," said the officer without the candle,
and drew his sword. Harry braced himself rapidly against the woodwork
at his back. The candle-light touched the barrel.

At that instant Harry felt the woodwork give way behind him, and fell
on his back on the ground.

"What's that?" cried the officer with the candle, standing still.

"Tis the scampering of the rats, of course," said the other.

Harry had apprehended, by this time, that the supposed wooden
partition was in reality a door in the cellar wall. He now pushed it
shut with his foot, remaining outside of it, then rose, and, feeling
about him, discovered that his present place was in a narrow arched
passage that ran, from the door in the cellar wall, he knew not how
far. Recalling the bumping of his head, he inferred now that the iron
something was a bolt, and that his blow had forced it from its too
large socket in the stone wall.

He proceeded onward in the dark passage for some distance, then
stopped to listen. No sound coming from the door he had closed, he
decided that the officers were satisfied the noise had been of the
rats' making. He sheathed his broken sword, having retained that
and his stick in his fall, and went forward, hoping to find a
habitable place of waiting. Soon the passage widened into a kind of
subterranean room, one side of which admitted light. Going to
this side, Harry stopped short at the verge of a well, on whose
circumference the subterranean chamber abutted. The light came from
the well's top, which was about ten feet above the low roof of the
underground room, the passage from the cellar being on a descent. In
this artificial cave were wooden chests, casks, and covered
earthen vessels, these contents proclaiming the place a secret
storage-room designe