A faggot was thrown down with a crash at the foot of the stairs. They heard men running. More faggots were carried in and piled in a heap that covered the dead men and the wrecked furniture. The darkness hid them at their work, though there was just one patch of moonlight where the doorway of the hall opened, and Fulk could see nothing more than the suggestion of shadows coming and going across this patch of moonlight. He found Isoult beside him, and her very nearness quickened his consciousness of their danger. “Are we to be smoked out?” “Burnt like rats. The house is all timber and thatch.” “What’s to be done?” “Isoult, there is but one thing to be done. Help me to lift this chest aside.” She put her hands to it, and between them they carried it back into the solar. “Isoult!” He caught her and held her almost roughly, for the love in him had come to desperate ends. “Let us fight rather than burn.” “That’s the cry. I will give these dogs cold steel in the dark. It is a chance, and nothing more. If I can but clear the hall of them, we can throw faggots across the doorway and hold it. And we can open the shutters and get out of this black pit.” He held her a moment longer. “Isoult, bide here, but come to me if I call. It will mean that I have won the fight. If I do not call, you will know how things have sped. Unbuckle these greaves and thigh-pieces; they are too heavy for such a game as hide-and-seek.” She knelt down and plucked at the buckles, and her fingers trembled a little. “Fulk, fight through, fight through.” He touched her hair with his hand. “There is life for us yet.” Fulk climbed over the oak chest and went step by step down the stairs, stooping with one hand stretched out to feel what lay before him. He had laid aside his gauntlets, and stuck his dagger into its sheath, meaning to trust solely to his sword and to quick wits and quick feet. Six steps from the bottom his hand touched the faggots, and feeling about him cautiously he found that he could step down on to the daïs table. As he crouched there, faggot after faggot was carried in and thrown upon the pile. Moving along the daïs table to the end wall of the hall, he came upon a gap that had been left, and through it he was able to slip to the ground. Fulk groped his way round by the wall till he came to the wooden screen across the far end of the hall and was able to see the outline of the great doorway filled with pale moonlight. A man appeared in it, carrying a faggot, but he vanished directly he gained the inside of the hall.