He realized, of course, that now, since he was once more able to walk, he would be guarded with unremitting care every moment of the day, and quite possibly every moment of the night as well, though the simple bolting of his door on the outside would seem to answer the purpose save when he was out-of-doors.  Once he went to the two east windows and hung out of them, testing as well as he could with his hands the strength and tenacity of the ivy which covered that side of the house.  He thought it seemed strong enough to give hand and foot hold without being torn loose, but he was afraid it would make an atrocious amount of noise if he should try to climb down it, and, besides, he would need two very active legs for that.

At another time a fresh idea struck him, and he put it at once into action.  There might be just a chance, when out one day with Michel, of getting near enough to the wall which ran along the Clamart road to throw something over it when the old man was not looking.  In one of his pockets he had a card-case with a little pencil fitted into a loop at the edge, and in the case it was his custom to carry postage-stamps.  He investigated and found pencil and stamps.  Of course he had nothing but cards to write upon, and they were useless.  He looked about the room and went through an empty chest of drawers in vain, but at last, on some shelves in the closet where his clothes had hung, he found several large sheets of coarse white paper.  The shelves were covered with it loosely for the sake of cleanliness.  He abstracted one of these sheets, and cut it into squares of the ordinary note-paper size, and he sat down and wrote a brief letter to Richard Hartley, stating where he was, that Arthur Benham was there, the O’Haras, and, he thought, Captain Stewart.  He did not write the names out, but put instead the initial letters of each name, knowing that Hartley would understand.  He gave careful directions as to how the place was to be reached, and he asked Hartley to come as soon as possible by night to that wall where he himself had made his entrance, to climb up by the cedar-tree, and to drop his answer into the thick leaves of the lilac bushes immediately beneath—­an answer naming a day and hour, preferably by night, when he could return with three or four to help him, surprise the household at La Lierre, and carry off young Benham.

Ste. Marie wrote this letter four times, and each of the four copies he enclosed in an awkwardly fashioned envelope, made with infinite pains so that its flaps folded in together, for he had no gum.  He addressed and stamped the four envelopes, and put them all in his pocket to await the first opportunity.

Afterward he lay down for a while, and as, one after another, the books he had in the room failed to interest him, his thoughts began to turn back to Mlle. Coira O’Hara and his hour with her upon the old stone bench in the garden.  He realized all at once that he had been putting off this reflection as one puts off a reckoning that one a little dreads to face, and rather vaguely he realized why.