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Yet within fifteen minutes we found a hut whose roof was intact, and therefore whose floor and inner parts were dry enough. It was a little hut, of the length of perhaps the height of four men, and the breadth of the height of three a man and a half high from floor to roof-beam. It was unoccupied, but there was straw at one end dry straw, on which doubtless guards had slept.
Tossing off her guiding hand, he ran to the ladder, mounted it half-way, and faced about upon the multitude. He had been well tutored. He fixed his eyes not upon the faces below but at an exalted roof-beam, and addressing that began: "Girls and boys, gentlemen and ladies: You have been invited here to-night to enjoy yourselves and to make somebody else enjoy himself.
The journeyman jumped down incautiously into the yard. And then Edwin, hardly knowing what he did, and certainly not knowing why he did it, walked quickly out on to the floor, seized the huge hook attached to the lower pulley of the tackle that hung from the roof-beam, pulled up the slack of the rope-bandage on the hind part of the machine, and stuck the hook into it, then walked quickly back.
Still, for she would yet further try the courage of Ulysses and his son, she helped them not as yet, but, changing her shape, sat on the roof-beam like unto a swallow. And then cried Agelaus: "Friends, Mentor is gone, and helps them not. Let us not cast our spears at random, but let six come on together; perchance we may prevail against them."
The stout roof-beam enabled the artificers to handle the great masses by means of the tackle; and as for the floor-beams, Darius had so far listened to warnings as to take them into account. "Take another impress, James," said Darius. And when he saw Edwin, instead of asking the youth what he was wasting his time there for, he good-humouredly added: "Just watch this, my lad."
The trap works. I tried it this afternoon with the small chisel." Long Ede lit his pipe tied down the ear-pieces of his cap, lifted a light ladder off its staples, and set it against a roof-beam: then, with the guns under his arm, quietly mounted. His head and shoulders wavered and grew vague to sight in the smoke-wreaths. "Heard anything more?" he asked. "Nothing since," answered the Snipe.
Under the roof-beam he fixed a wooden channel in which he arranged a block of pulleys. He carried the cord along the channel to the corner, where he set up some small piping. Into this a leaden ball, attached to the cord, was made to descend.
It was not the piping of throstle or sweet-throated merle that had waked my Beltane, who with slumberous eyes stared up at carven canopy, round him upon rich arras, and down upon embroidered bed-covering and silken pillow, while through the narrow lattice the young sun played upon gilded roof-beam and polished floor.
And now blow, all ye trumpets, and, all ye organs, tremble with exultant sound! Bring forth the harp, and the psaltry, and the sackbut! For the long winter of waiting is at an end, and Mike is flying north to fetch his bride. Now are the walls of heaven built four-square, and to-day was the roof-beam hung with garlands.
Hand in hand they walked amid the flowers with eyes only for each other until came they to a stair and up the stair to a chamber, rich with silk and arras and sweet with spicy odours, a chamber dim-lighted by a silver lamp pendent from carven roof-beam, whose soft glow filled the place with shadow.
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