he room below.

At the bottom of the steps was a heavy oaken door, which stood ajar,
hanging upon a single rusty hinge, and from the room within a dull, gray
light glimmered faintly. Myles pushed the door farther open; it creaked
and grated horribly on its rusty hinge, and, as in instant answer to
the discordant shriek, came a faint piping squeaking, a rustling and a
pattering of soft footsteps.

"The ghosts!" cried Gascoyne, in a quavering whisper, and for a moment
Myles felt the chill of goose-flesh creep up and down his spine. But the
next moment he laughed.

"Nay," said he, "they be rats. Look at yon fellow, Francis! Be'st as big
as Mother Joan's kitten. Give me that stone." He flung it at the rat,
and it flew clattering across the floor. There was another pattering
rustle of hundreds of feet, and then a breathless silence.

The boys stood looking around them, and a strange enough sight it was.
The room was a perfect circle of about twenty feet across, and was
piled high with an indistinguishable mass of lumber--rude tables, ruder
chairs, ancient chests, bits and remnants of cloth and sacking and
leather, old helmets and pieces of armor of a by-gone time, broken
spears and pole-axes, pots and pans and kitchen furniture of all sorts
and kinds.

A straight beam of sunlight fell through a broken shutter like a bar of
gold, and fell upon the floor in a long streak of dazzling light that
illuminated the whole room with a yellow glow.

"By 'r Lady!" said Gascoyne at last, in a hushed voice, "here is Father
Time's garret for sure. Didst ever see the like, Myles? Look at yon
arbalist; sure Brutus himself used such an one!"

"Nay," said Myles; "but look at this saddle. Marry, here be'st a rat's
nest in it."

Clouds of dust rose as they rummaged among the mouldering mass, setting
them coughing and sneezing. Now and then a great gray rat would shoot
out beneath their very feet, and disappear, like a sudden shadow, into
some hole or cranny in the wall.

"Come," said Myles at last, brushing the dust from his jacket, "an we
tarry here longer we will have chance to see no other sights; the sun is
falling low."

An arched stair-way upon the opposite side of the room from which they
had entered wound upward through the wall, the stone steps being lighted
by narrow slits of windows cut through the massive masonry. Above the
room they had just left was another of the same shape and size, but with
an oak floor, sagging and