Isaiah, who had kept his lamp pricked down to a bare flicker under his mantle, boldly thrust in the door. They were in a small, bricked guard-room. Directly before them was a second door, small, ponderous, and heavily barred. Across the threshold lay a man in armour, but snoring in the slumbers of the just. “This is the passage to the great tunnel of which I have heard so much?” asked Darius, softly. “Is not the exit guarded?” Isaiah shook his head. “That, too, is provided for. The guard across the river is more lax than here. But now we must push away this dolt and force the door.” Darius motioned with his hands, signifying that one twist of his fingers around the sentinel’s neck would speed him past mortal outcry; but when they rolled the rascal over, his guardian god favoured him. He grunted once, folded his hands, and fell again to snoring. The drug had done its work. Isaiah, Shaphat, and Zerubbabel applied themselves to the massive door. Its bolts and bars yielded one by one. They were about to put their strength against it and thrust inward, when the turnkey stepped to one side into a darkened corner. One step, but the mending or ending of five human lives was hanging on the planting of that foot. He trod on something soft, something living. In a twinkling there followed a howl, a yelp, a prodigious barking. “Fiends of Sheol blast the cur!” swore Zerubbabel, his iron bar clattering from palsied fingers. “All is lost!” Darius leaped upon the dog, caught him, strove to throttle; but the mongrel brute writhed from his grip, bounded to the outer door, and lifted up his muzzle, howling. Instantly a second dog answered, a third, a fourth, and more, till they seemed encircled by dogs uncounted. Human voices were beginning to swell the din. “Alarm! To arms! Turn out the guard!” The distant sentries were passing it one to the other. The five stood and stared in one another’s faces. The hopes of the night had been utterly dashed. What was left save death? But Darius, ever the soldier and leader, tossed up his head, and demanded fiercely: “Why gape and gibber here? Down the tunnel! We can cross before they reach the exit by bridge or boat.” “My lord,” answered Isaiah, sadly, “below this door, on the staircase, is machinery to the sluice, whereby the tunnel can be flooded. We cannot bar this entrance from within. To descend means drowning beneath the river.” The drunken sentinel stirred in his slumber, but did not waken; yet the others heard the nearing shouting. The sleepy soldiers were tumbling from their barracks. The five heard the clangour of the great brass gong at the palace gate. The Lord God knew how soon a “ten” of infantry would be on the fugitives. Darius had possessed himself of the helpless watchman’s sword. “By Ahura Most High!” was his desperate oath, “it is better to mount aloft with seven foes sped on before me, than to drown beneath the river. They shall not take me unresisting!”