“We will soon have you out of this. I have found a warm nest for you, where they pile the wood half-way up the chimney, and look glum if one does not eat more than one needs. You must rest there, Barbe, and forget everything for a while, and let the past die, dear, if you can. I suppose the folk below will not meddle to-night?” “No. Yet it is strange, John, they have brought me no food to-day.” “No food, child! Why?” “Oh, I had a little bread left.” “The brutes! And here am I chattering like a starling instead of getting to work.” He drew up the scarf, and unfastening the knot about the tools and pistol, laid them before him on the sill. Then he made a loop in the rope, so that the end should not be left dangling near the ground and betray him in case the man Pinniger were in a vigilant mood. He had brought a rag with a slip of lard in it, and he greased the bar with the fat where the file was to work, so that the tool should make less sound. The steady “burr” of the steel teeth soon told of their bite upon the rusty metal. The three bars were as thick as John Gore’s forefinger, but they had rusted away more at the lower ends, where the damp gathered and the rain had stood in tiny pools. A strong arm would be able to thrust them in after an hour or so’s steady filing. Barbara stood on the bed, leaning her arms against the wall and listening to the stubborn rasping of the file. There was a sweetness even in that rough, shrill sound to her, for life and desire were breaking in with strong arms and the beat of a man’s heart. She no longer felt the cold, but stood there conscious only of the dearness and mystery of it all, letting a sense of infinite peace steal in. She fell almost into a dreamy, wandering mood like one near to the edge of sleep, hearing him speak to her from time to time. Now and again he would stop and rest, and stretch a hand in between the bars, and she felt him once take a strand of her hair and lay it across his lips. John Gore had filed through one bar and bent it back, when a sudden, clear, ringing sound came up to them out of the silence of the tower, like the clash of something metallic upon stone. Barbara woke from her stupor of dreams like a frightened sentinel, and put up a hand as though in warning. “John! Did you hear that?” He had heard it, and hung there with every sense upon the alert, hating the wind that made the ivy rustle. Barbara had stepped down from the bed and crossed the room to the door. She knelt and laid her ear to the lock, holding her breath, her lips parted, her eyes at gaze. A vague suggestion of movement came to her from the dark well of the tower stair—a dull, slow, scraping sound that came up and up with moments of silence in between. There was no glimmer of light as she looked through the key-hole, nothing but that slow, cautious sound like some big thing crawling in a dark and narrow place.