indly fog
blown out of the North Sea, we might have made a move. As it was, I
had to agree that it would be sheer folly, before nightfall anyhow; and
there was nothing for it but waiting.

To add to the painfulness of this ordeal, I found myself obliged to
remain in my room, now that I had resumed my uniform. This time it did
not need Tiel to bid me take this precaution. In fact, I was amazed to
hear him suggesting that I would be just as safe in the parlour. At
the time I naturally failed altogether to understand this departure
from his usual caution, and I asked him sarcastically if he wished to
precipitate a catastrophe.

"We have still a good deal to discuss," said he.

"I thought there was nothing more to be said."

"I mean in connection with the other scheme."

"The devil may take the other scheme!" said I, "anyhow till we escape
from this trap. What is the good in planning ahead, with the house
watched night and day?"

"We only suspect it is watched," said he calmly.

"Suspect!" I cried. "We are not idiots, and why should we pretend to
be?"

And so I went up to my room and spent the most miserable and restless
day of my life. How slowly the hours passed, no words of mine can give
the faintest idea. In my present state of mind writing was impossible,
and I tried to distract myself by reading novels; but they were English
novels, and every word in them seemed to gall me. I implored Eileen to
come and keep me company. She came up once for a little, but the devil
seemed to have possessed her, for I felt no sympathy coming from her at
all; and when at last I tried to be a little affectionate she first
repulsed me, saying it was no time for that, and then she left me.
With baffled love added to acute anxiety, you can picture my condition!

For the first part of that horrible day I kept listening for some sign
of the police, and now and then looking out from the skylight at the
back, but the watcher was no longer visible, and not a fresh step or
voice was to be heard in the house. My door stood locked, my fire was
blazing, and my papers lay ready to be consumed, and at moments I
positively longed to see them blazing and myself arrested, and get it
over, yet nothing happened.

In the afternoon the direction of my thoughts began to change as the
hour approached when the fleet should sail and my country reap the
reward of the enterprise and fidelity which I felt conscious I had
shown, and the sacrif