Meanwhile, in the roof above him, a rafter here and there was gaping open, and fiery monsters, with blood-red eyes, were peeping down at him and puffing clouds of blue smoke through the interstices. Thousands and thousands of voices were bickering and chattering with each other, the voices of the fire-spirit's little ones quarrelling with each other over every little bit of rafter till their old mother, the evil flame, burst roaring through a huge tough beam and frightened them into silence. And, all the time, something was humming and crooning like a witch hushing little children to sleep; and in the midst of the charred and smouldering embers a buzzing and a fizzing was going on continually, like the noise made by an imprisoned bee; and the pent-up blast howled dismally down the chimney: Hoo! hoo! hoo! "They are dancing and singing outside there!" murmured the headsman to himself. And now the second layer of bricks was also pierced, and up through the rift, like a blast of wind, rushed the cold air of the cellar. Peter Zudár bent low over the gap and filled his lungs with a good draught of the life-giving air. He regularly intoxicated himself with it. The gap was just big enough to enable him to squeeze through it. First, however, with perilous curiosity, he cast a look round the room he was about to leave. The principal girder of the ceiling was bent in the middle from the intense heat, smoke was pouring into the room through every crack and crevice, and filled it already to the height of a man's stature; it was slowly descending in regular layers, lower and lower, like a gradually falling cloud. Little fluttering fiery threads were darting hither and thither, in the grey cloud, like tiny flashing birds. The fiery spectre, peeping through the rent in the roof, was already laughing a thunderous "ha! ha! ha!" Peter Zudár laughed back at it. "If thou dost laugh, I can laugh too, so the pair of us may laugh together!" Already he had crept half through the opening, whence he observed how the beams were curving above his head, how they were bursting and charring. All at once he recollected something. Hastily he scrambled out of the hole again. To walk upright in that room was impossible, for the clouds of smoke were now only three feet from the ground. He crept along the floor on all fours to his oaken chest, opened it, and drew forth therefrom a little Prayer Book and a couple of ribbons, which he thrust into his bosom. Then he also drew forth a long leather bag which was fastened at each end by a clasp. These clasps he opened, one by one, with the utmost composure. Inside lay the _pallos_,[16] that bright, two-edged implement which flashes at the command of the criminal law, the weapon of Justice. [Footnote 16: The sword of the public executioner.]