Hurrah! the flame flickered and caught at last.
"_Twang! Twang!"_ went the bows, harder at it than ever.

Something hurtled hotly through my hair--the iron bolt of an arbalest, as I knew by the song of the steel bow in a man's hand at the end of the passage.
"Get into a doorway, man!" cried Boris, as the light revealed me.
And like a startled rabbit I ran for the nearest--that within which Helene and the Lady Ysolinde were lying asleep.

The candle, as I have said, was set deep in a niche, which proved a great mercy for us.

For our foes, who had thought to come on us by fraud, could not now shoot it out.
Also, in relighting it, in my eagerness to save myself from the hissing arrows behind me, I had pushed it to the very back of the shrine.

I had no weapon now but my dagger, for, in rising to relight the candle, I had carelessly and blamefully left my sword in the straw.