Two o’clock, three o’clock, four o’clock, they counted the chimes with desperate eagerness--never were hours more leaden-footed--and still the child slept. A wan white look had come into her face, and she looked very ethereal and transparent. ‘_Bon dieu!_’ thought Jacques, in agony, ‘will she fade away before our very eyes?’ Involuntarily Pierre stirred; a spasm of cramp had shaken him to the soul, and Cecile awoke. Contrition and consternation stilled the cramp in Pierre’s vast frame, and he rocked her gently to and fro. ‘Give her to me, my friend,’ said Jean Jacques, quietly, but the look he bent on the child and the tone of his voice showed that despair had entered into him. Truly it was pitiful--the babe was strengthless and voiceless, she only made a little imploring gesture, and looked with eyes big and dark-shadowed in helpless appeal. The two men gazed at each other in silent accord, then Jacques said: ‘She will die, if she meets again the chill night air--it is all over, my friend; with the first shadows we must take her back.’ He gave one burning look at the sea that mocked him in long blue ripples of laughter, then turned to the babe in his arms with a smile in his eyes and soothing words. Pierre groaned, and turning over lay on his face motionless. Jacques’ watch had begun. How terrible those next three hours were--waiting for the pitiless sun to go down and the ending, ah!--such an ending of the Day of Hope. If they took her back at sunset, the child would live--yes, he knew that, he was sure of it--but at what a cost! Freedom to him was the all of life, the air he breathed; in the cause of freedom, or what he deemed such, had he not already endured two years of torment--must he go back to heaven knew how many more? Stay, could he not harden his heart? After all, who knows, the child might live anyway; it was only to keep her another four hours. A silent and bitter rage filled his heart, his own brilliant idea had cut from them their last chance; so near to freedom and yet how far; not even a run for their money, as the English say. Then his glance fell again on those appealing eyes that seemed to ask so much and yet so little--only to be taken back to her own little bed. A terrible dread and horror welled up in the convict’s heart, and quenched the flames of rage; the shame of his deed was casting its shadow before, and with anxious, desperate eyes, he watched the sun’s departure from the heavens with an agonising hope that the remorse of the murderer of an innocent might be spared him.