"Nay," said he, "they be rats. Look at yon fellow, Francis! Be'st as big
as Mother Joan's kitten. Give me that stone." He flung it at the rat,
and it flew clattering across the floor. There was another pattering
rustle of hundreds of feet, and then a breathless silence.

The boys stood looking around them, and a strange enough sight it was.
The room was a perfect circle of about twenty feet across, and was
piled high with an indistinguishable mass of lumber--rude tables, ruder
chairs, ancient chests, bits and remnants of cloth and sacking and
leather, old helmets and pieces of armor of a by-gone time, broken
spears and pole-axes, pots and pans and kitchen furniture of all sorts
and kinds.

A straight beam of sunlight fell through a broken shutter like a bar of
gold, and fell upon the floor in a long streak of dazzling light that
illuminated the whole room with a yellow glow.

"By 'r Lady!" said Gascoyne at last, in a hushed voice, "here is Father
Time's garret for sure. Didst ever see the like, Myles? Look at yon
arbalist; sure Brutus himself used such an one!"

"Nay," said Myles; "but look at this saddle. Marry, here be'st a rat's
nest in it."

Clouds of dust rose as they rummaged among the mouldering mass, setting
them coughing and sneezing. Now and then a great gray rat would shoot
out beneath their very feet, and disappear, like a sudden shadow, into
some hole or cranny in the wall.