hing of--the creak, and the fall, and the stifled cry.

Sighard looked once, and then threw himself on his knees, drawing
his stout seax as he did so.

"Have it up!" he said, with his teeth clenched, "have it up!"

Then a thought came to me, and I beckoned to Erling. It might be
that armed men lurked under that trapdoor, and that our end was
coming; but at least we would have fair play.

"Go and bar the door to the great hall," I told him. "We will have
none else in here if there is a fight. Then see if you can get the
door to the guest hall undone."

He nodded and went out. One of the Mercians asked sharply where he
was going; but Sighard paid no heed to him, for he was trying to
get his blade into the saw cut, and so raise the square of
flooring.

"Thane," I said to the Mercian, staying him from following Erling,
"he will shut the door to the hall, and let this thing be seen
through in silence. Go you and watch at the door of Offa, for it
has bided untended long enough."

He went out in haste, and Erling watched him there. I saw him sit
down to the table whence he had risen at my coming, and set his
head on his hands as if in despair. I had no fear that he would
call Offa yet, or that Erling would suffer him to go to his
comrades in the hall. The other two stayed and watched Sighard
silently.

Now the old thane had his blade fast in the timber and lifted. The
square of floor rose slowly at that corner, and one of the Mercians
set his hand to it. Another lift, and the whole was coming up, for
the boards had been fastened together with cross pieces underneath,
doorwise. As it rose I heard the fall of props that had kept it in
place, and I bade Sighard have a care. I feared it would let him
through suddenly as these props fell; but it had been roughly
hinged at one end with thongs. He rose, and he and the Mercian
heaved on the door and threw it back.

Then below us gaped a black pit which seemed to go deep into the
earth, and for a moment we shrank back from it as men must needs do
when a depth is suddenly before them. Nor should I have wondered if
thence the bright points of waiting spears had darted upward in our
faces.

But there was nothing save a little cold draught of wind that blew
into them from out of that pit, and we looked into it. I held the
torch so that its flickering blaze went to the bottom, and as we
saw what was there a groan came from us.

There was the great chair lying, overturned on