"The count!" exclaimed the quarryman, with savage joy, stepping towards the door: "Oh, Worse than a Wolf, you will no longer bite! I shall kill the wretch!"
"Keep still or we are lost," interrupted Azenor in a low voice. "The Count is not alone; think of your child!" and pointing with rapid gesture to the cabinet of massive oak, she hastily whispered to the serf: "Push that piece of furniture across the door. Be quick! We shall have time to flee! Your enemy, Neroweg, has only a few more steps to climb! I hear his spurs clank upon the stone floor!"
Fergan, thinking only of the safety of his child, followed the advice of Azenor, and, thanks to the herculean strength he was endowed with, succeeded in pushing the massive piece of furniture across the door, which, thus barricaded, could not swing open into the room. The sorceress hastily wrapped herself in a mantle; took from the cabinet whence she had extracted the casket, a little leathern bag containing precious stones, and said to the quarryman, holding the casket out to him: "Take this gold and let's flee."
"Carry your gold, yourself! I shall carry my child and my pick to defend him!" answered the serf, taking up his iron bar with one hand, and placing on his left arm little Colombaik, who held fast by his father's neck. At that very moment the fugitives heard from without the sound of the key that turned in the lock, followed by the voice of the seigneur of Plouernel: "Who is holding that door back inside? Is that one of your enchantments, accursed sorceress?"
While the Count was beating against the door, and, redoubling his imprecations, vainly sought to force it, the quarryman, his son and Azenor, gathered in the turret, prepared to flee by the secret passage. One of the slabs of the flooring, being swung aside by means of a counterweight and chains wound around an iron axis, exposed the first step of a ladder so narrow that it could barely allow passage to one person at a time, and of such a slope at that spot that its first ten rungs could be cleared only by sliding down almost on the back from step to step. Azenor was the first to undertake the narrow passage; the little Colombaik imitated her; the two were followed by Fergan, who then readjusted the counterweight. The stone slab, back again in its place, again masked the secret passage. This steep portion of the ladder was wrought in an abutment of the turret, where its base projected beyond the wall of the donjon. Its foot connected with the narrow stone spiral, which, wrought in the ten-foot thick wall, descended to the lowest depths of the donjon. At each landing, a skilfully masked outlet opened upon this secret passage, lighted by not a ray from without. But Fergan, equipped with his tinder box, punk and wick, of the kind that he helped himself with in the quarries, lighted the passage, and, with his iron pick in one hand, his light in the other, preceded his son and Azenor down the stone spiral. The descent was but slowly effected.