That afternoon seemed to Bob interminable. He paced up and down like a caged lion, waiting for the dark. He wondered who the writer of the message was, what it implied, what possible plan of deliverance was in contemplation—for surely it must mean that someone was planning on his behalf. Many times he gazed out of the window, searching the whole vista from the horizon to the river below, knowing all the time that during the daylight nothing would be done, yet looking and looking again. The hours passed slowly, lingeringly. As night began to shadow the hills he ceased his restless walk and remained fixed at the recess in the wall. The sky darkened, his outlook shortened; he lost sight of the hills, at length he could not see the opposite bank. He leant forward in the recess, till his head touched the sides of the outer opening. The wind was fresh and cold, but he heeded nothing. His eyes tried to penetrate the dark until he felt that they were almost projecting from his head. Thus he waited, waited, and shivered, looking, listening, seeing nothing, hearing only the slow gurgle of the river as it rolled down between its frozen borders, and the creaking and grinding of the ice as the floating masses met, and parted, and met again. So the hours passed, and Bob began to lose heart. Was the message a Russian trap? Yet what could it gain? Was it genuine, but his unknown correspondent had been prevented in some way from keeping the implied appointment? A bugle-call struck his ear; and when its echoes had died away the world relapsed into the same silence, save for the occasional bark of a dog, the dull noises of the ice-laden stream, and the sighing of the wind over the snowy wastes beyond. It became colder; the wind blew more and more keen; and at length, his limbs cramped, his fingers numbed, Bob had perforce to move, and lift his rug from the floor and wrap it round him.