d her
father, Van Tromp had gone obediently to bed: so much was obvious to the
watcher in the road. And yet he still waited, straining his ears, and
with terror and sickness at his heart; for if Esther had followed her
father, if she had even made one movement in this great conspiracy of
men and nature to be still, Dick must have had instant knowledge of it
from his station before the door; and if she had not moved, must she not
have fainted? or might she not be dead?

He could hear the cottage clock deliberately measure out the seconds;
time stood still with him; an almost superstitious terror took command
of his faculties; at last, he could bear no more, and, springing through
the little garden in two bounds, he put his face against the window. The
blind, which had not been drawn fully down, left an open chink about an
inch in height along the bottom of the glass, and the whole parlour was
thus exposed to Dick's investigation. Esther sat upright at the table,
her head resting on her hand, her eyes fixed upon the candle. Her brows
were slightly bent, her mouth slightly open; her whole attitude so still
and settled that Dick could hardly fancy that she breathed. She had not
stirred at the sound of Dick's arrival. Soon after, making a
considerable disturbance amid the vast silence of the night, the clock
lifted up its voice, whined for a while like a partridge, and then
eleven times hooted like a cuckoo. Still Esther continued immovable and
gazed upon the candle. Midnight followed, and then one of the morning;
and still she had not stirred, nor had Richard Naseby dared to quit the
window. And then about half-past one, the candle she had been thus
intently watching flared up into a last blaze of paper, and she leaped
to her feet with an ejaculation, looked about her once, blew out the
light, turned round, and was heard rapidly mounting the staircase in the
dark.

Dick was left once more alone to darkness and to that dulled and dogged
state of mind when a man thinks that Misery must have done her worst,
and is almost glad to think so. He turned and walked slowly towards the
stile; she had told him no hour, and he was determined, whenever she
came, that she should find him waiting. As he got there the day began to
dawn, and he leaned over a hurdle and beheld the shadows flee away. Up
went the sun at last out of a bank of clouds that were already
disbanding in the east; a herald wind had already sprung up to sweep the
leaf