houghts were very bitter, as he lay, his loneliness of the uttermost. He
turned his face to the wall.

In that posture he slept after a time, watched over by Bigot with looks
of rage and pity. And on the room fell a long silence. The sun had
lacked three hours of setting when he fell asleep. When he re-opened his
eyes, and, after lying for a few minutes between sleep and waking, became
conscious of his position, of the day, of the things which had happened,
and his helplessness--an awakening which wrung from him an involuntary
groan--the light in the room was still strong, and even bright. He
fancied for a moment that he had merely dozed off and awaked again; and
he continued to lie with his face to the wall, courting a return of
slumber.

But sleep did not come, and little by little, as he lay listening and
thinking and growing more restless, he got the fancy that he was alone.
The light fell brightly on the wall to which his face was turned; how
could that be if Bigot's broad shoulders still blocked the loophole?
Presently, to assure himself, he called the man by name.

He got no answer.

"Badelon!" he muttered. "Badelon!"

Had he gone, too, the old and faithful? It seemed so, for again no
answer came.

He had been accustomed all his life to instant service; to see the act
follow the word ere the word ceased to sound. And nothing which had gone
before, nothing which he had suffered since his defeat at Angers, had
brought him to feel his impotence and his position--and that the end of
his power was indeed come--as sharply as this. The blood rushed to his
head; almost the tears to eyes which had not shed them since boyhood, and
would not shed them now, weak as he was! He rose on his elbow and looked
with a full heart; it was as he had fancied. Badelon's stool was empty;
the embrasure--that was empty too. Through its narrow outlet he had a
tiny view of the shore and the low rocky hill, of which the summit shone
warm in the last rays of the setting sun.

The setting sun! Ay, for the lower part of the hill was growing cold;
the shore at its foot was grey. Then he had slept long, and the time was
come. He drew a deep breath and listened. But on all within and without
lay silence, a silence marked, rather than broken, by the dull fall of a
wave on the causeway. The day had been calm, but with the sunset a light
breeze was rising.

He set his teeth hard, and continued to listen. An hour before sunse