s and the clatter of
laughter and song with which the Dozen reveled in the feast of its
ancient enemies.

The delight of the Lakerimmers in the banquet was no greater than the
misery of the Crows whose wings had been clipped, and who had been
left to flop about in the dark nooks of the chapel. The feast of the
Dozen had just begun when two of the Crows in the cupola and two
others in the cellar bethought themselves to roll close to each other,
back to back, and untie the knots around each other's wrists. They
were soon free, and quickly had their fellows liberated and the gags
all removed. But the liberty of hands and feet and tongues, though it
left them free to express their rage, still left them as far as ever
from the banquet which, as they soon suspected, was disappearing
rapidly under the teeth of the Lakerimmers. They groped around in the
pitch-black darkness, and finally one of the men in the cupola found a
little round window through which he could put his head and yell for
help. His cry was soon answered by another that seemed to come faintly
from the depths of the earth.

XI

The far-off cry which the six Crows in the cupola heard coming from
the depths of the earth was raised by the eleven Crows in the cellar.
By dint of much yelling the two flocks made their misery known to each
other. The trouble with the cellar party was that it could not get up.
The trouble with the cupola crowd was that it could not get down. And
they seemed to be too far apart to be of much help to each other, for
the cupola Crows had lost little time in lifting the trap-door of the
belfry and finding that the ladder was gone, and none of them was
hardy--or foolhardy--enough to risk the drop into the uncertain dark.
So there they waited in mid-air.

The cellar Crows, when they had released each other's bonds, and
groped around the jagged walls, and stumbled foolishly over each other
and all the other tripping things in their dungeons, had succeeded in
forcing apart the wooden doors between their three cells and joining
forces--or joining weaknesses, rather, because, when they finally
found the cellar stairs, they also found that, for all the strength
they could throw into their backs and shoulders, they could not lift
the door, with all the heavy weights put on it by the Dozen. There
were a few matches in the crowd, and they sufficed to reveal the
little cellar windows. These they reached by forming a human ladder,
as the