in one wild ecstasy, her eyes for depth and purity
the very mountain wells. She lived, breathed, moved, smiled, sighed
in this same austere atmosphere under the same grey sky that hung low
outside his cell; the same snowfall that he could catch a glimpse of
through the tiny space above his door was seen by her that moment in
Doom; she must be taking the flavour of the sea as he could sometimes do
in blessed moments even in this musty _oubliette_.

The day passed, a short day with the dusk coming on as suddenly as if
some one had drawn a curtain hurriedly over the tiny aperture above the
door. And all the world outside seemed wrapped in silence. Twice again
his warder came dumbly serving a meal, otherwise the prisoner might have
been immeasurably remote from any life and wholly forgotten. There was,
besides his visions of Olivia, one other thing to comfort him; it was
when he heard briefly from some distant part of the castle the ululation
of a bagpipe playing an air so jocund that it assured him at all events
the Chamberlain was not dead, and was more probably out of danger. And
then the cold grew intense beyond his bearance, and he reflected upon
some method of escape if it were to secure him no more than exercise for
warmth.

The window was out of the question, for in all probability the watch was
still on the other side of the fosse--a tombstone for steadfastness and
constancy. Count Victor could not see him now even by standing on his
box and looking through the aperture, yet he gained something, he
gained all, indeed, so pregnant a thing is accident--even the cosy
charcoal-fires and the friends about him in the chateau near Saint
Germain-en-Laye--by his effort to pierce the dusk and see across the
ditch.

For as he was standing on the box, widening softly the aperture in the
drifted snow upon the little window-ledge, he became conscious of cold
air in a current beating upon the back of his head. The draught, that
should surely be entering, was blowing out!

At once he thought of a chimney, but there was no fireplace in his cell.
Yet the air must be finding entrance elsewhere more freely than from the
window. Perplexity mastered him for a little, and then he concluded
that the current could come from nowhere else than behind the array of
marshalled empty bottles.

"_Tonnerre!_" said he to himself, "I have begun my career as wine
merchant rather late in life or I had taken more interest in these dead
gentlemen