-night. You could break through that window, and it would seem
as if I had done it myself."

For answer the man turned upon his heel and stalked out of the place
without a word.

"Get out, you rude boor!" cried Hilary, as the door slammed and the key
turned. "Kill me and bury me! Bah! I should like to see them do it."

A faint noise outside made him scale the window once more; but there was
no sign of Adela, so he returned.

"Well, they're not going to starve me," he said to himself, as he looked
at the plates before him, one containing a good-looking pork pasty, the
others a loaf and a big piece of butter, while a large brown jug was
half full of milk.

There was a couple of knives, too, the larger and stronger of which he
took and thrust beneath the straw.

"What a piggish way of treating a fellow!" he muttered. "No chair, no
table; not so much as a stool. Well, I'm not very hungry yet, and as
this is to last till to-morrow I may as well wait."

He stood thinking for a bit, and then the idea of escaping came more
strongly than ever, and he went and examined the door, which seemed
strong enough to resist a battering-ram.

There was the window as the only other likely weak place, but on
climbing up and again testing the mortar with the point of his knife,
the result was disheartening, for the cement of the good old times
hardened into something far more difficult to deal with than stone. In
fact, he soon found that he would be more likely to escape by sawing
through the bars or digging through the stone.

"Well, I mean to get out if Lipscombe don't send and fetch me; and I'll
let them see that I'm not quite such a tame animal as to settle down to
my cage without some effort;" and as he spoke he looked up at the
ceiling as being a likely place to attack.

He had the satisfaction of seeing that it was evidently weak, and that
with the exercise of a little ingenuity there would be no difficulty in
cutting a way through.

But there was one drawback--it was many feet above his head, and
impossible of access without scaffold or ladder.

"And I'm not a fly, to hold on with my head downwards," he said, half
aloud.

He slowly lowered himself from the window-sill, and had another good
look at the walls, tapping them here and there where they had been
plastered; but though they sounded hollow, they seemed for the most part
to be exceedingly thick, and offered no temptation for an assault.

He stood there m