“Hear the bubble,” said the Dane; “the well must be many a fathom deep—­how long it seemed before they came up!”

So they drank their fill, saying that it was useless to go down therefore, and anyhow there would be naught but a few silver vessels.

“I have seen the same before,” said one; “and moreover no man has luck with those things from a church.”

No man gainsaid him, so they kicked the bucket down the well and went away.

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 against us.

“This is what I feared, though I must needs make light of it,” he said.

“It cannot harm us here,” I answered.

“All round this court on three sides the buildings are of wood; sheds and storehouses they are and of no account, but if one falls across the well mouth—­what then?”

“Then we are like to be stifled,” said I; for even now the smoke grew thicker, even so far down as we were.  And when I looked out and up there was naught but smoke across the well mouth, and with that, sparks.

“Pent up and stifled both,” said the quavering voice of the sacristan from behind us.  “How may we get out of this place till men come and raise the ruin that will cover us?  And who knows we are here but ourselves?”

“Forgive me for bringing you to this pass,” said the prior gravely, after a little silence.

The smoke grew even denser, and we must needs cough, while the tears ran from my eyes, for the stinging oak smoke seemed trapped when once it was driven down the well.