Let us seek further into this .-- Thanes, if aught has been done amiss to our king, we are all in danger." The floor creaked under my foot again, and I looked back to it.
What I saw now made me start and call the others to me.
"See here!" I cried.
Round that clear space where the chair had been was a saw cut newly made.

It went through the flooring, so that the square was like a trapdoor.

And it was uneven, as if it had been made in haste.

Then I knew what must have been the meaning of the sounds we heard and thought nothing of--the creak, and the fall, and the stifled cry.
Sighard looked once, and then threw himself on his knees, drawing his stout seax as he did so.
"Have it up!" he said, with his teeth clenched, "have it up!" Then a thought came to me, and I beckoned to Erling.

It might be that armed men lurked under that trapdoor, and that our end was coming; but at least we would have fair play.
"Go and bar the door to the great hall," I told him.