And the night deepened, and the cold; and deep sank the expression of both into his tormented soul. Once he thought he heard a window opened and the sound of voices in parley; and at that the least spark of hope flickered in him that negotiations (of what nature he was too stupefied to so much as remotely conceive) were in process on his behalf. But the murmur ceased and the glass was rattled to, and a profounder misery settled upon him that the little needle of light had showed itself to vanish. He was abandoned to his fate; and about that he felt no bitterness. Only he greatly desired that the climax of his personal affairs should suffer no long postponement. It may have been an hour short of midnight when, with his sad eyes fixed upon the moonlit square of window, his lids closed involuntarily and he sank into a sort of unresting stupor of the faculties. How long this travesty of sleep dwelt with him he might not know; but in an instant he had leapt from it and made as if to scramble to his feet. Something, that seemed to his disordered mind horribly suggestive of evil, had come between him and the white patch of the casement. He tried to cry out, and found no power but for a sigh; and suddenly the shape was beside him, silently, on its knees, and an arm was round his neck and a soft hand upon his mouth. “Betty, Betty, Betty!” whispered a tiny febrile voice in his ear--and instantly he knew, and, giving a little broken whinny, dropped his tired head upon her shoulder. She clasped him, and she made no shame to kiss him with her lips like flowers; and then very gently, very pitifully, she passed her fingers over his right ear, over his left, and gave a heaving sigh from the bosom that lifted against his cheek. “Oh, the cowards, the cowards!” she whispered, “to fright me so, and for a lie!” He found a little voice for her. He would have, I think, from the grave. “Are you come to save me, Betty?” “Yes.” “My hands are tied behind. They are so cut and bound I have lost all feeling in them; and if I shouldn’t be able to rise, Betty?” She held his head to her convulsively. She cried silently, as a woman can if she will. “We must not be a moment,” she whispered. “I hear them talking. We must move like mice. There is a horror outside; but what of it, if it let me pass to you.” She put her hand again on his mouth, tacitly bidding him to the most tense silence. With her heart torn with pity, she bent and examined the knots. They were cruelly drawn, but love and good white teeth will work sufficient miracles. She had cracked harder nuts in her time. He felt her at work like a rat, vicious and determined. Once he felt lips light like down on the bruised members, and he thought. Though they were mortified and dead they should quicken at that.