With the fall of night he brought the bulk of his force up into the cross-streets near the gate and posted sentries to see that none passed from the town to the fort. Then he went to the house of Raula and fetched the lad. Telo was afraid of the night and the many armed men, and would go only if Polaris, whom he trusted, would carry him. "Show him the spring at the head of the old cowpath, Telo," said Raula, and to Polaris, "Bend down the clump of evergreen bushes above the spring, and you will find the way through the rock. Beware of the sentries at the stables. Once one of them nearly slew me when I came suddenly on him out of the dark." She bent nearer and whispered: "Perchance you will meet and slay Broddok, the captain. I pray you do. And ere you smite, tell him that Raula, daughter of Hecar, sent you to him." As Polaris went out to the street, with the lad on his shoulder, he heard the girl's shrill laughter within the house--laughter that made him shiver. Followed by a thousand of his swordsmen, including the hundred men of Jastla, Polaris marched silently around rough devious streets to the side of the hill, and then into the rough ground where the boy directed. It was a dark night, for the stars were dimmed by storm-clouds, and the going was slow. Raula had said it would take at least an hour and the half of another to gain the crest of the hill, and Polaris had ordered his men in the town to hold their hands until they should hear his trumpets, and then to attack the gates of the citadel with trees and fire. At the spring the clump of bush was found easily, and behind it in the face of the hill was a hole in the rock, so low that a man must bend nearly double to enter it. Here Polaris gave Telo into the arms of a young Rutharian soldier, bidding him bear the lad safely back to his sister. Bending down, the son of the snows entered the hole. Jastla, who never let his charge beyond arm's reach, crowded in at his heels. For six feet or more they walked with their knees nearly to their chins, and then were able to stand upright. The girl had told them that a light in the passage could not be seen from above because of the trees, and one of the soldiers had nursed a smouldering torch under his cloak. That was brought in and whirled into flame, and they proceeded along a narrow gully, over the floor of which the water trickled. "Oof! That maid must have been very love-sick, or she has the courage of a fighting man, to have climbed this place in the dark," muttered Jastla, as he surveyed the gloomy cavern. For nearly three hundred yards the party followed the subterranean ravine, the floor of which sloped upward sharply. It ended in a shaft that was nearly perpendicular, which the men must climb by the aid of jagged rocks where the course of the stream had been worn for centuries.