That hour and a half passed heavily by, during which Mrs. Clink and Fanny talked the matter over again, reflected, speculated, hoped, and feared. Colin did not come. Eleven o'clock struck--he was not there; they looked out, but could see nothing; listened, but could hear nothing. Twelve came--midnight--he did not return. Fanny could not be restrained by Mrs. Clink any longer, and she went up alone to the scene of his enterprise, trusting there at least to ascertain something. All was silent as the grave. One solitary light alone, as of some one retiring to quiet rest, was visible in the mad-house, and that was all. But while she stood, she heard a horseman enter the stony yard, as though he had come from the Whin-moor road. The light of a lantern glanced along the walls above, and then vanished in the stables. She hastened, terrified, back again--Colin was not there. The whole night passed--morning broke--the world grew light and gay--but he did not come again. CHAPTER XIII. _Colin's attempt to liberate Fanny's father from the madhouse, with the adventures that befell him thereupon._ When Colin had taken leave of his friends, and passed out of his mother's house, he found the night, as he thought, peculiarly adapted for his purpose. The air was dark and troubled, vexed with contending winds, which blew, as it seemed, now from one quarter of the heavens, and then again from its opposite, while drops of rain occasionally came on the blast, succeeded by momentary showers of hail. Though summer-time, the weather felt as though it had suddenly changed to that of March, so cold and ungenial was the blast. He pursued his way for some distance along a dark lane, fenced high with thick hawthorn on each side, and traversed by deep ruts, here and there containing puddles of water, which reflected some little light as they caught the sky, and deceived him with the idea that something white was lying in his road. From this lane he crossed a stile and several fields, as offering the most direct route to the back part of the grounds around the doctor's house. When arrived there, he stopped outside the plantation, in order to assure himself that no person was about. Nothing living stirred at that hour. He forced his way through a thorny gap in the fence, and soon found himself at that north-east corner of the yard-wall which he had particularly specified. He now uncoiled his rope, and cautiously threw up that end of it to which a grappling-hook was attached. After a few efforts it caught firm hold, and, as the distant clock struck ten, he ascended to the top of the wall; though, as he fancied this elevation would bring him in relief against the sky, he crouched as closely as possible, in order to avoid being seen, should it unluckily so chance that any individual of the establishment was about. “Are you there?” asked Colin, in a low but earnest voice, as he peeped down into the yard.