For forty-eight hours afterwards he waited for the return of the spider, waited for it to climb down on its silken thread and run across his hand again: but in vain. One day as he exercised with his gang in the prison yard he noticed a man who once or twice before had been his leader in the dreary round—a young fellow with dark eyes, and protruding jaws that had evidently been broken in a fight. He noticed that he was talking to him. A spasmodic movement of his hands told Rupert that he wanted to say something. As they turned Rupert caught his eye and signalled that he was ready to receive a message. He was not yet an adept in this new art of conversation, but his senses were alert and his instincts already preternaturally sharpened. He concentrated his whole mind on his fellow convict, and, perhaps unconsciously, he read his thoughts even before he understood the message which hand and foot, head and shoulders sent with lightning-like rapidity. Translated, it meant that some of them were going to be removed from Wormwood Scrubbs prison. "Good," Rupert signalled back. He found himself grinning until he read another signal of "Shut up!" from the blue-eyed convict. The change might be for the worse, but that did not trouble Rupert. There was to be a change! Perhaps a journey somewhere. Outside the prison walls. The silence would be broken. He wanted to shout aloud with joy. The silence would be broken! They would go out into the streets. The streets where there were cabs and omnibuses, and great drays with horses in them, and men and women hurrying to and fro; and children playing. They might even go a journey; in a train through fields and forests. They would see blue sky and perhaps sunshine. He thought of nothing else for the rest of the day; he dreamed of it at night. Next morning hope alternately rose and fell in his heart, refusing to die throughout the day’s routine. He continually built pictures of the journey he might take. So far, the effect of prison had been to make him like a child again. Time had ceased to exist; he took no count of days, but the news of the change made him wonder how long he had been at Wormwood Scrubbs. A week, a month, a year?—— It was curious how little he had thought of those he loved. At first, when he had been taken away from the Old Bailey, he had been temporarily overcome by remorse. The night after the trial he had suffered agonies. Yet curiously enough after that night, thoughts of the outside world and those he knew in it had not troubled him much. He had been a coward in so much as he had been afraid to think of his father or his sister—or Ruby.