He waited, however, an hour or two longer, knowing the habit of the maids to lie awake and gossip in the dark. But when he heard the Dives watchman passing the inn gateway and calling out, “Midnight! and all’s well!” he crept out, and keeping close in the shadow of the wall, reached the stairway to the gallery by the count’s sleeping room. The moon had risen and might have betrayed him as he mounted it, but fortunately the stair was overhung by vines. He made his way along the gallery to the count’s window. There was no glass in it, and, as it was summer time, the heavy wooden shutter that guarded it was wide open, the bars seeming quite enough protection from ordinary intruders. But they could not keep out this little boy, who drew in his breath and made his little stomach as flat as possible as he cautiously wriggled in between them. At last he stood on tiptoe in the count’s chamber. As he gazed about, here and there the moonlight touched some object of its quaint furnishings, and although Geoffrey, on the inn errands, had been in the room before, everything now looked strange and unfamiliar to his wide-open, excited eyes. To his dismay he had not considered how he should find the sword; but as he stood wondering and groping about in the dim light, a beam of moonlight fell at the foot of the high-posted, carved and canopied bed where the count lay asleep, and showed the scabbard with the sword in it, hanging by its chased metal hook to a projecting ornament in the heavy carving of the bed. Geoffrey tiptoed over toward it, all the while listening, with his heart in his mouth, to the count’s breathing. He seemed to be sound asleep, for now and then he gave a little snore; but, as with trembling fingers Geoffrey took down the sword, its tip end struck lightly against a tall chest of drawers near by, and the count started slightly. Geoffrey crouched down hopelessly in the shadow of a chair, expecting the count to pounce upon him at any moment. But in a few minutes Hugo’s regular breathing told that he was again deep asleep. Geoffrey then hastened to make his way back to the window, though he found the sword in its heavy scabbard rather an awkward burden for a little boy, and it became still more awkward as he prepared to climb between the bars. He first thought he would take the sword out of its sheath; but then how could he drop it to the gallery below without making a noise? He could not climb out with it in his arms. So, on second thought, he decided to leave it in the scabbard, whose metal hook he saw might be useful; then lifting this, which took all his strength, he carefully thrust it outside between the bars, on one of which he hung the hook, thus keeping both sword and sheath from falling.