ne would have expected. They had got the trunk of a
tree, and were going to batter the door in. But now we were all armed,
for Raven had brought Havelok's gear with him when he fetched his own.
He had thought also for Goldberga, and she was sitting in the corner of
the tower walls wrapped in a great cloak that she had used at sea, with
her eyes on her husband, unfearing, and as it seemed waiting for the end
that her dream foretold.

I called the rest, and we looked down on the men. They saw us, and an
arrow or two flew at us, badly aimed in the moonlight.

"Waste of good arrows," said Havelok; "but we must keep them from the
door somehow."

"Would that the jarl would come," growled Biorn, "for I do not see how
we are to do that."

"If they do break in," said I, "any one can hold a stairway like this
against a crowd."

"I do not want to hurt more of these," answered Havelok, looking round
him. And then his eyes lit up, and he laughed. "Why, we can keep them
back easily enough, after all."

He went to the tower corner, and shouted to the men below. Four or five
had the heavy log that they were to use as a ram, and they were just
about to charge the door with it, and no timber planking can stand that
sort of thing.

"Ho, men," he cried; "set that down, or some of you may get hurt."

They set up a roar of laughter at him as they heard, and then Havelok
laid hold of the great square block of stone that was on the very corner
of the wall, and tore it from its setting.

"Odin!" said Biorn, as he saw that, "where do they breed such men as this?"

"Here," answered Withelm, looking at the sheriff.

Now Havelok hove up the stone over his head, and a sort of gasp went up
from the crowd below. One saw what was coming, and ran to drag back the
men with the beam, and stopped short before he reached them in terror,
crying to them to beware. But their heads were down, and they were
starting into a run.

"Halt!" cried Havelok, but they did not stay. "Stand clear!" he shouted
in the sailor's way.

And then he swung the stone and let it go, while those who watched fled
back as if it was cast at them. Down is crashed on the attackers,
felling the man whom it struck, and dashing the timber from the grasp of
the others, so that one fell with it across his leg and lay howling,
while the rest gathered themselves up and got away from under the tower
as soon as they might.

Now no man dared to come forward, and that angered Have