Now I breathed freely again, and was about to whisper to the prior
that his thought of making what would pass for bubbling was good;
but more Danes came. And they were men of Halfden's ship; so we
must wait and listen, and this time I thought that surely we were
to be found. For the men began to play with one another as they
drank from the bucket; pushing each other's heads therein, and the
helm of one fell off and fled past us to the bottom; and some words
passed pretty roughly. And after they had done quarrelling they
crowded over the trapdoor, as one might know by the darkening of
the shaft. Then one saw the helm, for it was of leather, iron
bound, and had fallen rim upward, so that it floated. Now one was
going to swarm down the rope to get it, but as he swung the rope to
him, the bucket swayed in the water under the helm, and he saw that
it did so. Whereon he wound both up, and they too went away.

"That was a lucky chance!" I whispered.

"No chance at all, my son; that was surely done by the same Hand
that sent you here to warn us," answered the prior. And I think
that he was right.

Now came a whiff of biting smoke down the well shaft, borne by some
breath of wind that eddied into it. The Danes had fired the place!

"Father," I whispered, pulling the prior forward, for he had gone
into the little cell to give thanks for this last deliverance.

He looked very grave as he saw the blue haze across the doorway,
hiding the moss and a tiny fern that grew on the shaft walls over