went down like a felled tree, and lay as he fell athwart the floor of the
outer room. The man who had struck him bent hastily, studied his face for
a moment, rose, and returned to his work at the door.

"Your poison!" said a voice in Graham's ear.

Then abruptly they were in darkness. The innumerable cornice lights had
been extinguished. Graham saw the aperture of the ventilator with ghostly
snow whirling above it and dark figures moving hastily. Three knelt on
the vane. Some dim thing--a ladder--was being lowered through the
opening, and a hand appeared holding a fitful yellow light.

He had a moment of hesitation. But the manner of these men, their swift
alacrity, their words, marched so completely with his own fears of the
Council, with his idea and hope of a rescue, that it lasted not a moment.
And his people awaited him!

"I do not understand," he said. "I trust. Tell me what to do."

The man with the cut brow gripped Graham's arm. "Clamber up the ladder,"
he whispered. "Quick. They will have heard--"

Graham felt for the ladder with extended hands, put his foot on the
lower rung, and, turning his head, saw over the shoulder of the nearest
man, in the yellow flicker of the light, the first-comer astride over
Howard and still working at the door. Graham turned to the ladder again,
and was thrust by his conductor and helped up by those above, and then
he was standing on something hard and cold and slippery outside the
ventilating funnel.