Slowly, slowly, the sun went down. With the lengthening of the shadows Jacques made his preparations for the return. He formed a cradle of the blanket by passing a piece of the rope through the four corners, and then made the end of the rope fast to the roof. When the lights began to twinkle from the town through the fast gathering dusk, and the strains of the convict band playing in the Place came to their ears, they journeyed--and it was time indeed. Pierre went first down the rope, then Jacques lowered the child in her blanket cradle into his arms and followed, flinging the rope back again on to the roof, that no sign of their hiding should be left for the buzz to make mock of. They took a narrow upper path that led above the town to the back of the Governor’s house. A sneering fate kept that procession as secret as the former one--not a creature came nigh them. The buzz was recruiting its disappointed energies with gossip to the strains of Faust. Jean Jacques, a former distinguished member of that orchestra, even now, as he walked in Pierre’s wake, jaded with hunger and fatigue, and racked with the pangs of despair, cursed his successor under his breath for a wrong note in the solo of the Devil’s serenade, the strains of which were wafted to him on an unfriendly breeze. ‘Hurry, Pierre,’ he said between his teeth. Rapidly and noiselessly they skirted the outer wall, passed through a wicket gate, and crossed the garden to the long white house. It seemed deserted, save for a light streaming into the outside darkness from a window on the ground floor. Creeping quietly forward, Jacques saw through the open casement the figure of the Governor seated at a table in a long low room that did duty as a library. His head was bowed upon his two outstretched arms, a hat, cloak, and pistol were laid on the table in front of him. So the preparations had been made!... Jean Jacques withdrew, and making a sign to Pierre they moved back along the verandah until once again they were below the window of their little prisoner’s room. Noiselessly as she had been taken from it Cecile was restored to the little bed that lay ready for her. With a deep sigh she turned her eyes gratefully on Jacques as he placed her softly amongst the pillows, and then closed them in an exhaustion, deep as the grave. After listening a moment to make certain from her breathing that all was well, he drew the clothes gently over her, closed the mosquito-curtains, and slid to the ground. ‘_Allons!_’ said he to Pierre, and linked his arm in his comrade’s. So they passed through the open window and stood before the Governor. He raised his grey head slowly from his arms, and sat staring in amaze at the two figures in front of him. ‘Monsieur le Gouverneur,’ said Jean Jacques, simply, ‘we are here, my friend and I, to render ourselves; you may do to us what you please--we have failed.’