Sam and Dodger skulked through the upper hall, settling where they could get a view of the meeting chamber. The room’s only illumination was the fire in the massive stone hearth at one end, but that made it far brighter than the hall and upper stories. The sliding doors to the room were open, allowing a rectangle of flickering light to fall across the ancient flooring and scale the paneled wall opposite the door. At first Sam thought that Glover and his cronies were foolish to leave the panels open, but then he remembered his own eavesdropping of the previous night. No servant would creep to the door and listen from concealment, for they would be seen. Any who crept close would be disclosed to those within the room as well; the hall’s flooring would announce their passage and alert the conspirators. Likewise, a servant returning from the upper stories in defiance of his earlier dismissal would be betrayed by the creaking of the old staircase.