Once more I crawled beneath the stair and peeped out. It was broad day, but still Hector had not come. Then fear seized me. Had he fallen into the hands of Lag and been done to death? Was the price of my freedom to be his life, and if he had been taken, where was Mary? I had his assurance that she was in a place of safety. There was comfort in that knowledge. But the comfort was alloyed by the thought that I had no knowledge whatever of her whereabouts and that she was lost to me. I was almost tempted to throw caution to the winds, and quit my hiding-place in broad daylight to go in search of them both. I stretched out my hand to seize the step and swing it back, and then discretion returned to me and I refrained. Any rashness now might bring to nothing all we had accomplished. I must wait. There was nothing for it but patience and unwavering trust. Every hour that dragged its weary length along was leaden with torpor. Would the day never come to an end? Hector, I knew, was not likely to come to me save under the screen of the darkness, and the darkness seemed very far off. The longest day, however, draws sometime to a close, and at last the rays of light stealing through the chinks in the staircase ceased to be burnished spears and were transmuted into uncertain plumes of smoke. The hour of twilight had come; soon darkness would envelop the earth, and with the darkness Hector might come. I crawled out of the confined space in which I was lying and sought the deeper part of the passage. As I did so, I heard a grating sound. Someone was moving the step. It must be Hector! Yet in that moment of tense expectation I kept a grip upon myself and did not move. If, instead of Hector, it should prove to be some murderous pursuer on my track, I knew that in this darkness, to which my eyes through long imprisonment had become accustomed, I should have the advantage and might fall upon him unawares. A voice spoke and my fears were set at naught. The packman had come! "Are you there?" he asked. "Yes," I answered. "Ha’e you got my Horace?" "Confound Horace and all his works! Where is Mary?" "Mary, the bonnie lass! she’s a’ richt. Ye micht trust me for that. Ye’ll be seein’ her in less than half an ’oor. Where’s my book?" I handed him the volume, and though I could not see him I guessed from the sound of the leaves fluttering through his fingers that he was examining it carefully.