Then at his utmost need came reassurance and something like ease of mind.  He heard a sound of voices at the front of the house, and sprang to his balconied window to listen.  Captain Stewart and O’Hara were walking upon the brick-paved terrace and chatting calmly over their cigars.  The man above, prone upon the floor, his head pressed against the ivy-masked grille of the balcony, listened, and though he could hear their words only at intervals when they passed beneath him he knew that they spoke of trivial matters in voices free of strain or concern.

He drew back with a breath of relief, and at that moment a sound across the room arrested him, a soft scraping sound such as a mouse might make.  He went where it was, and a little square of paper gleamed white through the darkness just within the door.  Ste. Marie caught it up and took it to the far side of the room away from the window.  He struck a match, opened the folded paper, and a single line of writing was there: 

“He will go with you.  Wait by the door in the wall.”

The man nearly cried out with joy.

He struck another match and looked at his watch.  It was a quarter to ten.  Four hours left out of the fourteen.

Once more he lay down upon the bed and closed his eyes.  He knew that he could not sleep, but he was tired from long tramping up and down the room and from the strain of over-tried nerves.  From hour to hour he looked at his watch by match-light, but he did not leave the bed until half-past one.  Then he rose and took a long breath, and the time was at hand.

He stood a little while gazing out into the night.  An old moon was high overhead in a cloudless sky, and that would make the night’s work both easier and more difficult, but on the whole he was glad of it.  He looked to the east, toward that wall where was the little wooden door, and the way was under cover of trees and shrubbery for the whole distance save a little space beside the house.  He listened, and the night was very still—­no sound from the house below him, no sound anywhere save the barking of a dog from far away, and after an instant the whistle of a distant train.

Ste. Marie turned back into the room and pulled the sheets from his bed.  He rolled them, corner-wise, into a sort of rope, and knotted them together securely.  Then he went to one of the east windows.  There was no balcony there, but, as in all French upper windows, a wood and iron bar fixed, into the stone casing at both ends, with a little grille below it.  It crossed the window space a third of the distance from bottom to top.  He bent one end of the improvised rope to this, made it fast, and let the other end hang out.  The east side of the house was in shadow, and the rolled sheet, a vague white line, disappeared into the darkness below, but Ste. Marie knew that it must reach nearly to the ground.  He had made use of it because he was afraid there would be too much noise if he tried to climb down the ivy.  The room directly underneath was the drawing-room, and he knew that it was closed and shuttered and unoccupied both by day and by night.  The only danger, he decided, was from the sleeping-room behind his own, with its windows opening close by; but, though he did not know it, he was safe there also, for the room was Coira O’Hara’s.