The four lads, meanwhile, hidden in their corner of the courtyard, had watched the scene with sick dismay—had heard Ned unbar the door—had seen the Lean Man draw nearer, his bare blade reddened by the fire—had heard him laugh and mutter like a ghoul as he waited till the heat dwindled enough to let Shameless Wayne come through to him. This way and that Griff looked about him, seeking a weapon and finding none, his brain rocking with the thought of all that rested on his shoulders; and then his eyes brightened, and he stepped unheard amid the hissing of the flames, to where the smooth, round stone lay that had lately capped the right pillar of the gateway. A moment more and he was behind the Lean Man; he lifted the stone as high as unformed arms would let him, and hurled it full between Nicholas Ratcliffe’s shoulderblades, and dropped him face foremost on to the flaming threshold. "A Wayne! A Wayne!" he cried, and after him his three brothers took up the ringing call. The Lean Man put his hand out as he fell, and twisted with a speed incredible till he was free of the flames; and then he scrambled to his feet somehow, and tottered forward. "On to him, lads," cried Griff, and would have closed with him, but Nicholas rallied, and picked up his fallen sword, and moved backward to the gateway, swinging the steel wide before him. The lads gave back a pace or two, but he dared not stop to pay them for their night’s work; his eyes were dimming, and his right hand loosening on the hilt, and he knew that his course was run if Shameless Wayne should cross the threshold before he found a hiding-place. Griff watched him go, his fingers itching all anew for his unfleshed sword; and just as Nicholas staggered through the gate, the two Ratcliffes who had kept ward at the other doors came running round the corner of the house, ready to close with those who had given the cry. "A Wayne, a Wayne!" They found four lads against them, standing unarmed, and straight, and fearless altogether, in the crimson glow. "Why, what’s this?" said Red Ratcliffe, half halting. "Have these sickling babes driven old Nicholas off?" "Ay," answered Griff, not budging by one backward step; "and would drive you off, too, ye Ratcliffe redheads, if we had any weapon to our hands." Red Ratcliffe rapped out an oath and made headlong at the lad. And Shameless Wayne, seeing all this from across the gathering flames, leaped wide across the threshold, and landed on the outskirts of the fire, and cut Red Ratcliffe’s blade upward in the nick of time. The other Ratcliffe drove in at him, then, and turned his blade in turn, and the fight waxed swift and keen for one half-moment; then Wayne got shrewdly home, and dropped his man close under the house-wall; and Red Ratcliffe, waiting for no second stroke, had turned and flashed through the gateway toward the moor before Wayne had guessed his purpose.