As, however, on this dark, early autumn night Bevill turned away from the deep window to cast himself on his pallet, neither bedclothes nor light having ever been supplied him since his detention, he heard voices speaking below on the stone courtyard which was between the wall of the fortress itself and the gate known as the Porte de la Ville. And not only did he hear those voices, but, on turning his eyes back towards the window, he saw the reflection of some light cast upon the upper part of the embrasure. A moment later, and even before he could return to the window to glance below, he heard the sound of planks and boards being cast down upon the stones. "The Allies must be near," he whispered to himself, "very near. And their presence is known. Some further protection against them is about to be undertaken, something is to be erected, perhaps to shield or obscure the defenders. Some mantlets, it may be." Then, his heart stirred, his pulses beating at the hopes that had sprung to his breast; the hopes that even now, at the eleventh hour, the chance of escape, of rescue, was at hand, Bevill glanced towards the stone courtyard again. The soldiers below were, he saw, undoubtedly about to raise some erection with the planks and boards they had brought into the courtyard. Yet, to the mind of the prisoner above, who, in his time, had not only taken part in sieges but had himself on more than one occasion been besieged in some strong fortress or town of the Netherlands, it did not appear that either mantlet or temporary shield against sharpshooters of the enemy was about to be erected. Instead, four large stones, each forming the corner of a square, had been removed from the earth below, and easily removed, too, as though this was not the first time they had been subjected to the process. A moment later, in the spots those stones had occupied four short posts had taken their place, while, next, two other stones were removed in the middle of the square space. A second later a platform, itself a square of about eight feet, had been lifted on to the top of those posts and was being nailed down to them at each corner. "I misdoubt me of what it is they do," Bevill murmured to himself as he saw this, while now the warm glow, the throb, the tremor of happy anticipation that had sprung to his heart but a few moments ago ebbed from it, leaving in its place a chill as of ice, one that he thought must be as the chill of death. "Ah!" he gasped now. "Ah! It is so. That tells all." For the soldiers, still working steadily below, had lifted first one piece of framework and then another--two long posts that, in their way, resembled signal posts at crossroads--on to the wooden platform, had thrust the lower ends through it into the two holes last left empty, and had gradually fitted them into the vacant spaces.