back with a breath of relief, and at that moment a sound across
the room arrested him, a soft scraping sound such as a mouse might make.
He went where it was, and a little square of paper gleamed white through
the darkness just within the door. Ste. Marie caught it up and took it
to the far side of the room away from the window. He struck a match,
opened the folded paper, and a single line of writing was there:

"He will go with you. Wait by the door in the wall."

The man nearly cried out with joy.

He struck another match and looked at his watch. It was a quarter to
ten. Four hours left out of the fourteen.

Once more he lay down upon the bed and closed his eyes. He knew that he
could not sleep, but he was tired from long tramping up and down the
room and from the strain of over-tried nerves. From hour to hour he
looked at his watch by match-light, but he did not leave the bed until
half-past one. Then he rose and took a long breath, and the time was at
hand.

He stood a little while gazing out into the night. An old moon was high
overhead in a cloudless sky, and that would make the night's work both
easier and more difficult, but on the whole he was glad of it. He looked
to the east, toward that wall where was the little wooden door, and the
way was under cover of trees and shrubbery for the whole distance save a
little space beside the house. He listened, and the night was very
still--no sound from the house below him, no sound anywhere save the
barking of a dog from far away, and after an instant the whistle of a
distant train.

Ste. Marie turned back into the room and pulled the sheets from his bed.
He rolled them, corner-wise, into a sort of rope, and knotted them
together securely. Then he went to one of the east windows. There was no
balcony there, but, as in all French upper windows, a wood and iron bar
fixed, into the stone casing at both ends, with a little grille below
it. It crossed the window space a third of the distance from bottom to
top. He bent one end of the improvised rope to this, made it fast, and
let the other end hang out. The east side of the house was in shadow,
and the rolled sheet, a vague white line, disappeared into the darkness
below, but Ste. Marie knew that it must reach nearly to the ground. He
had made use of it because he was afraid there would be too much noise
if he tried to climb down the ivy. The room directly underneath was the
drawing-room, and he knew that it was closed