to look out at the dark night, Hilary saw
that the fire was as good as extinct, and ended by sitting down.

The stones were very cold, but he felt weary, and at last so intense a
desire to sleep came upon him that he lay down, and in spite of the
hardness of his couch and the fact that he had no pillow but his arm, he
dropped off into a heavy sleep, from which he did not awaken till the
sun was shining in through the window upon the smoke-blackened walls.

Hilary's first thought was concerning his cutlass, which was safe by his
side, and jumping up, he listened. Then he went to the door and
listened again, but all was perfectly still.

What was he to do? he asked himself. He felt sure that Allstone would
come before long, and others with him, to obtain possession of the
weapon, and he was equally determined not to give it up. He might fight
for it, but, now that he was cool, he felt a repugnance against shedding
blood; and, besides, he knew that he must be overcome by numbers,
perhaps wounded, and that would make a very uncomfortable state of
things ten times worse.

The result was that he determined to hide the cutlass; but where?

He looked around the place, and, as far as he could see, there was not a
place where he could have hidden away a bodkin, let alone the weapon in
his hand.

Certainly he might have heaped over it the black ashes of the straw and
the few unburned scraps; but such a proceeding would have been childish
in the extreme.

It was terribly tantalising, for there was absolutely no place where he
could conceal it; and at last, biting his lips with vexation, he
exclaimed, after vainly looking out for a slab that he could raise:

"I must either fight for it or throw it out of the window; and I'd
sooner do that than he should have it back. Hurrah! That will do!" he
cried eagerly, as a thought struck him.

Laying down the cutlass, he leaped up to the window, pressed his face
sidewise against the bars, and looked down, to see that the grass and
weeds grew long below him.

He was down again directly and seated upon the floor, where, after
listening for a few moments, he stripped down one of his blue worsted
stoutly-knitted stockings, sought for a likely place, cut through a
thread, and, pulling steadily, it rapidly came undone. This furnished
him with a line of worsted some yards long.

Leaping up, he rapidly tied one end round the hilt of the cutlass,
climbed to the window, and lowered t