Neale sat down at last on the settee, and in the silence and darkness gave himself up to thoughts of a nature which he had never known in his life before. Here, at any rate, was adventure!--and of a decidedly unpleasant sort. He was not afraid for himself. He had a revolver in his hip-pocket, loaded--he had been carrying it since Tuesday, with some strange notion that it might be wanted. Certainly he might have to go without food for perhaps many hours--but he suddenly remembered that in the pocket of his Norfolk jacket he had a biggish box of first-rate chocolate, which he had bought on his way to the cricket club meeting, with a view of presenting it to Betty, later on. He could get through a day on that, he thought, if it were necessary--as for the loaf of bread, something seemed to nauseate him at the mere thought of trying to swallow a mouthful of it. The rest of the evening went: the silence was never broken. Not a sound came from the mysterious chamber behind him. No step sounded on the gravel without: no hand unlocked the door from the garden. Now and then he heard the clock of the parish church strike the hours. At last he slept--at first fitfully; later soundly--and when he woke it was morning, and the sunlight was pouring in through the red-curtained windows high in the walls of his prison. CHAPTER XXIX THE SPARROWS AND THE SPHERE Neale was instantly awake and on the alert. He sprang to his feet, shivering a little in spite of the rugs which he had wrapped about him before settling down. A slight current of cold air struck him as he rose--looking in the direction from which it seemed to come, he saw that one of the circular windows in the high wall above him was open, and that a fresh north-east wind was blowing the curtain aside. The laboratory, hot and close enough when he had entered it the previous evening, was now cool; the morning breeze freshened and sharpened his wits. He pulled out his watch, which he had been careful to wind up before lying down. Seven o'clock!--in spite of his imprisonment and his unusual couch, he had slept to his accustomed hour of waking.