using, with the place of his confinement gradually
growing more gloomy, and the glow in the sky reminding him of how
glorious the sea would look upon such an evening.

There were a few strands of straw lying about, and he proceeded to kick
them together in an idle fashion, his thoughts being far away at the
time, when a sudden thought came to him like a flash.

The place was paved with slabs of stone, and it had been the chapel of
the old mansion; perhaps there were vaults underneath, or maybe cellars.

The more he thought, the more likely this seemed. The old builders in
that part of England believed in providing cool stores for wine and
beer. In many places the dairy was underground, and why might there not
be some place below here from which he could make his escape?

He stamped with his foot and listened.

Hollow, without a doubt.

He tried in another part, and another; and no matter where, the sound
was such as would arise from a place beneath whose floor there was some
great vault.

"That'll do," he said to himself, with a half-laugh. "I'm satisfied; so
now I'll have something to eat."

The evening was closing in as he seated himself upon the straw and began
his meal, listening the while for some sign of the presence of Adela
under his prison window, but he listened in vain. There was the evening
song of the thrush, and he could hear poultry and the distant grunting
of his friend the pig. Now and then, too, there came through the window
the soft cooing of the pigeons on the roof, but otherwise there was not
a sound, and the place might have been deserted by human kind.

"So much the better for me," he said, "if I want to escape;" and having
at last finished his meal, he placed the remains on one side for use in
the morning, and tried to find a likely stone in the floor for
loosening, but he had to give up because it was so dark, and climbed up
once more to the window to gaze out now at the stars, which moment by
moment grew brighter in the east.

There was something very soft and beautiful in the calm of the summer
night, but it oppressed him with its solitude. In one place he could
see a faint ray of light, apparently from some cottage window; but that
soon went out, and the scene that had been so bright in the morning was
now shrouded in a gloom which almost hid the nearest trees.

Now and then he could hear a splash in the moat made by fish or
water-vole, and once or twice he saw the star-beje