As he sat there watching the fire die, he heard the great clock over the gateway strike eleven; as he still sat on, listening for any sound which might announce the coming of those who would be sent to fetch him, he heard it strike twelve. Yet still no one came. By this time the candle in the socket high up out of reach was flickering and flaring at its last ebb and throwing great shadows on the walls; and once, as he looked round the room, disturbed by some movement of Fordingbridge's, he saw that the latter was sitting up on his bed peering at him with his great hollow vacant eyes, in which the glare of madness was almost intensified by the unsteady waverings of the candle's flame. Then, as the great clock tolled one, the light went out, and he heard Fordingbridge throw himself back on his bed. Still the time went on--once Fordingbridge laughed in the dark, an imbecile, vacant laugh; once, he could have sworn, he heard him mutter "Sholto!" and once he moved uneasily on his pallet and groaned--and then the clock struck two. But still he sat on in the darkness before the dead fire, waiting, waiting. And, at last, he heard a sound of a door opening in a distant corridor, then another, and then footsteps approaching. And a moment later Bluet's voice was speaking outside. "Monsieur," he heard him say, "_Je regrette beau-coup_, but the judges have departed; monsieur's chance is not yet arrived." And with a heartbroken groan Bertie groped his way to where his bed had been placed and flung himself upon it, while, as he did so, he heard his maniacal foe at the other end of the _calotte_ muttering to himself and laughing once more. CHAPTER XXV. "HIS HOURS TO THEIR LAST MINUTE MOUNTED." After that night Bertie ceased to believe that he would ever go forth from the Bastille; a lethargy, which was partly despair and partly a fierce, bitter repining at the inexplicable, unmerited cruelty which had consigned him to such a place, took possession of his spirits, and he came to regard himself as one who was dead to the world for ever. Yet from the other--to whose long sufferings his own could at present form no comparison--he received consolation in many forms; from De Chevagny, continual exhortations were made that he should never lose heart, while even Bluet would tell him, in his own familiar, good-natured manner, that he was far too young a visitor to consider himself a permanency as yet.