But he had not taken a step inside before he hastily withdrew.
"There is something there," he cried--"something that breathes. A light, Gil."
One of the four lit a lantern from his flint and poked it within. It
revealed the foul floor and the rotting acorns, and in the far corner, on a
bed of withered boughs, something dark which might be a man. They stood
still and listened. There was the sound of painful breathing, and then the
gasp with which a sick man wakens. A figure disengaged itself from the
shadows. Seeing it was but one man, the four pushed inside, and the last
pulled the door to behind him.
"What have we here?" the leader cried. A man had dragged himself to his
feet, a short, square fellow who held himself erect with a grip on a
side-post. His eyes were vacant, dazzled by the light and also by pain. He
seemed to have had hard usage that day, for his shaggy locks were matted
with blood from a sword-cut above his forehead, one arm hung limp, and his
tunic was torn and gashed. He had no weapons but a knife which he held
blade upwards in the hollow of his big hand.
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