"Or--yes, _mon Dieu_!" with a change of attitude, "we might break through the roof ?" And, throwing back his head, he scanned the cobwebbed surface of laths which rested on the unceiled joists.
"Umph!" "Well, why not, Monsieur?
Why not break through the ceiling ?" Tignonville repeated, and in a fit of energy he seized his companion's shoulder and shook him.

"Stand on the bed, and you can reach it." "And the floor which rests on it!" "_Par Dieu_, there is no floor! 'Tis a cockloft above us! See there! And there!" And the young man sprang on the bed, and thrust the rowel of a spur through the laths.

La Tribe's expression changed.

He rose slowly to his feet.
"Try again!" he said.
Tignonville, his face red, drove the spur again between the laths, and worked it to and fro until he could pass his fingers into the hole he had made.

Then he gripped and bent down a length of one of the laths, and, passing his arm as far as the elbow through the hole, moved it this way and that.