The boys retreated into the outer room, where Gilbert had remained. He was leaning over the ruin, looking up at a window in the angle of the wall, and when the others reached him he said in tones of fear, "Look! there is a light in the haunted room!"
[1] A basket.
[2] "Raiding-strake," the final blow which clears up everything.
[3] "Peerie," little.
CHAPTER VIII.
"THEREFORE THEY GO THEIR WAYS."
I ought to explain that the passage leading to that "haunted" chamber sloped upwards steeply enough to require a step here and there along it. It might even be called a stairway; therefore the little room—which had been the goal of Yaspard's present raid—was situated on a much higher level than the larger and more dilapidated apartment.
It was not possible to walk round and peep into the room, from which a flickering light was streaming through a tiny slit in the thick wall that did duty for a window. But we must not suppose that the courage of a Viking-boy was going to be daunted by trow-laughter or ghost-lights. No; nor by stone walls and high windows! The walls of Trullyabister were rugged, and, on that side at any rate, perforated by holes convenient for supporting the toe of a boot, and for otherwise assisting an athletic youth, thirsting for information, to solve the mysteries of the interior.
"I'll know what it means, or——" Yaspard did not finish his sentence in words; he shut his mouth up tight, and, scrambling over the ruins like a monkey, he was soon climbing up to the window.