She broke down utterly, and though she tried to stifle it, the sound of her weeping would not be smothered. Pity of it went to the man’s heart. A great tremor swept across his face. He stretched out an arm between the bars into the darkness of the room. “Barbe, I ask nothing—I’ll know nothing—till you wish. Don’t weep, dear heart, when I cannot come at you to comfort.” His tenderness beat in on her, so that she seemed to master herself, only to fall into a new fear, and that lest he should be discovered. “You must go, John. Why am I keeping you here? If they were to come!” No words could have made him hardier in his daring. “Take no care for me, Barbe. This is but the beginning of it all.” She put up her hands to him in appeal. “No, no; they would kill you, perhaps!” “I am not so easily dealt with, dear. Answer me one thing. Some brute struck you to-night?” She leaned her head against the wall. “Oh, that is nothing—nothing.” “Nothing!” And she could picture the bronzed grimness of his face. “Tell me, Barbe—the big man, or the little crooked rogue?” “The big man.” “Now I know my dog.” The hardness of the window-stone, and the cramp and stiffness in his muscles, forced him to remember that he had the descent to make, and that it would not do to waste his strength. “I must go now, Barbe,” he said, “before I get too stiff.” She seemed to realize suddenly all the peril of that dark descent, and the dear hardihood that had brought him to her. “John, if you should slip!” Her tone held him there, loath to leave her when her voice thrilled so. “No, I have done my scrambling about a ship’s gear. Next time I shall bring a rope.” She put up her hands to the bars. “But it is so dark, and so deep. Can’t I help you, John?” He hung there, and, seeing her hands so near, stretched one of his to meet them. “What have you in the room, Barbe?” “There are the sheets on the bed.” “How many?” She climbed down and pulled the bedclothes on to the floor. “Two sheets and the blanket.” “A short three fathoms. They would help me over the worst piece. Are you strong enough to knot them into a rope?” “Yes, John—yes.” She set to work in the dark, rolling the sheets up and knotting the ends as stoutly as she could. Yet she mistrusted the knots, lest they should slip and dash the man to the stones below. And in her dread of it she pondered the case, and then looked up at the window. “Have you a knife?” “Surely, being a sailor.” He fumbled for it, cramped and wedged in as he was, and dropped it down upon the bed. Barbara felt for it, and, cutting off two thick strands of her hair, bound down the ends of the knots with the strands so that they should hold more surely under his weight. “Here, John.” She mounted the bed and held the end to him, and he knotted it about the bar as firmly as a seaman could. “Can you reach it when I have gone? Try.” She reached out her hands. “Yes, easily. Take the knife back. They might find it, and suspect.”