From that entrance of the clearing the outbuildings hid the hut from us. When our rush brought us in sight of the hut door we were not six paces from it and just in time to see Hylactor spring on and bear to the earth a man who stood before it. Leaving him to Hylactor we dashed inside, urged by indubitable shrieks. In the dim interior we made out each child struggling with a man and Nona with two. Before they could turn our knives had slaughtered the children's assailants. One of the survivors Agathemer cracked over the head with his staff. I stabbed the other. Whereupon Agathemer cut the throat of the man he had downed, and dashing outside, finished the man Hylactor was worrying. Quicker than it takes to tell it the five were dead. Nona had fainted, as we rescued her. But Agathemer revived her with a dash of cold water in her face and some strong wine poured between her lips. We laid her on her bed and told the children to watch her. Then we dragged out the corpses, laid them in a row and considered them. All five were pattern ruffians; black-haired, burly, brutal and fierce. We had had amazing luck to dispose of them so easily. Five lucky flukes, Agathemer called it, and we without a scratch. One by one we picked them up and carried them off, down the slope, to a soft bit of soil among some beeches. There we laid them in a row. On them we found a few silver coins, five daggers, five knives, five amulet-bags, nothing else. Their tunics and cloaks were old and of poor material. Back to the hut we went and found Nona revived and at the door. "Begone!" she said. "Flee! Hasten! That man was my husband's bitterest enemy. He was intent on revenge. But he could never have found this place save by tracking my husband and conjecturing his destination. My husband must have camped last night less than a day's journey from here. He will be here today, he may be here any moment. Save yourselves. Begone!" Agathemer and I looked at each other. "We shall not set off," I said, "until we have buried the five corpses. I'm not going to be haunted on my way and perhaps for life by any such spooks as the ghosts of those five ruffians. We shall make sure that they are safely buried." Agathemer agreed with me and we set about the task. During the winter we had found mattocks, pickaxes, hoes, spades and shovels hid in the most unlikely places, each by itself, and had hafted them; with these we dug a big pit and in it laid the five corpses, and buried them too deep for any wolf, badger or other creature to be at all likely to smell them and dig them out or dig down to them. When the men were buried it was past noon. We went back to the hut, drank a second draught of the strongest and sweetest wine and drank it unmixed, as we had drunk our first before we set about carrying the corpses into the forest. Nona renewed her adjurations to begone.