An open attack was out of the question, especially as upon the day following the arrival there of Lady Margaret three hundred more mercenaries had marched in from Worcester, so that the garrison was now raised to five hundred men.
"Is there no way," Cnut exclaimed furiously, "by which we might creep into this den, since we cannot burst into it openly ?" "There is a way from the castle," Cuthbert said, "for my dear lord told me of it one day when we were riding together in the Holy Land.

He said then that it might be that he should never return, and that it were well that I should know of the existence of this passage, which few besides the earl himself knew of.

It is approached by a very heavy slab of stone in the great hall.

This is bolted down, and as it stands under the great table passes unnoticed, and appears part of the ordinary floor.

He told me the method in which, by touching a spring, the bolts were withdrawn and the stone could be raised.