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.