Like a ghostly retort to her appeal came the sound of armed men thundering over the bridge. Their rough voices rose in the night’s silence, smitten through with the clash and clangour of arms. Fulviac had caught John of Brissac’s company in the woods by Gilderoy. There had been a bloody tussle and much slaughter. Triumphant, they were at the gate with Prosper the Preacher in their midst. The pair in the cavern stared at each other with a mute appeal. "Fulviac," said the girl in a whisper. "The door!" "It is barred." They were silent and round-eyed, as children caught in the midst of mischief. Mailed fists and pike staves were beating upon the gate. A babel of impatience welled up without. "Adrian, Gregory!" "Lazy curs!" "Unbar, unbar!" Mocking silence leered in retort. Yeoland and the Lord of Avalon were still as mice. The din slackened and waned, as though Fulviac’s men were listening for sound of life within. Then came more blows upon the gate; fingers fumbled at the closed grill. The man Gregory lay and stared at the rocky roof; Adrian sat with his face pooled by his own blood. A fiercer voice sounded above the clamour. It was Fulviac’s. The girl shivered as she stood. "Ho, there, Gregory, Adrian; what’s amiss with ye?" Still silence, mocking and implacable. The lull held for the moment; then the storm gathered. "Break down the gate," roared the voice; "by God, we will see the bottom of this damned silence." The Lord Flavian of Avalon had stood listening with the look of a man cooped in a cavern, who hears the sea surging to his feet. He glanced at the dead guards, and went white. To save his soul from purgatory it behoved him to act, and to act quickly. A single lamp still burnt in the oratory of hope. He went near to the girl on the dais, and held up the crossed hilt of his sword. "By the Holy Cross, mercy!" She cast a frightened glance into his eyes, and continued mute a moment. The thunder grew against the gate, the crash of steel, a rending din that went echoing into all the pits and passage-ways of the place. Fulviac’s men had dragged the trunk of a fallen pine up the causeway, and were charging the gate till the timber groaned. The man, with his sword held like a crucifix, stood and pleaded with his eyes. "Mercy!" he said; "you know this warren and can save me." "Are you a craven?" "Craven? before God, no, only desperate. What hope have I unharnessed, one sword against fifty?" For yet another moment she appeared irresolute, dazed by the vision of Fulviac’s powerful wrath. He was a stark man and a terrible, and she feared him. The timbers of the gate began to crack and gape. Flavian of Avalon lifted up his voice to her with a passionate outburst of despair. "God, madame, I cannot die. I am young, look at me, life is at its dawn. By your woman’s mercy, hide me. Give me not back to death."