She ascended cautiously through the darkness, reached a gap—­once a window—­from which her ascent must be made, and listened for a few moments to hear if anything stirred above her.

It seemed as though the old store was full of noises, for the fingers of decay never cease from picking and, in the silence of night, one can best hear their stealthy activities.  Little falls of fragments sounded loudly, even echoed, in this great silence.  There was almost a perpetual rustle and whisper; and once a thud and skurry, when a rat displaced a piece of mortar which fell from the rotting plaster.  Dark though the heaven was and black the outer night, it had the quality that air never loses and she saw the sky as possessed of illumination in contrast with its setting of the broken window.  Within all was blankly black; from above there came no sound.

She climbed to the window ledge, felt for the nails that Abel had hammered in to hold his feet and soon ascended through a large gap under the eaves of the store.  Some shock had thrown out a piece of brickwork here.  Seen from the ground the aperture looked trifling and had indeed challenged no attention; but it was large enough to admit a man.

For a moment Estelle stood in this aperture before entering the den within.  She raised her voice, which fluttered after her climb, and called to him.

“Abel!  Abel!  It’s Estelle.”

There came the thought, even as she spoke, that he might answer with a bullet; but he answered not at all.  She felt thankful for the silence and hoped that he might have deserted his retreat.  Perhaps, indeed, he had never come to it; and yet it seemed impossible that he had for two days escaped capture unless here concealed.  It occurred to her that he might wander out by night and return before day.  He might even now be behind her, to intercept her return.  Still no shadow of fear shook her mind or body.  She felt not a tremor.  All that concerned her conscience was now completed and she hoped that it would be possible to dismiss from her thoughts the fellow creature who had destroyed her joy of life and worked evil so far reaching.  She could leave him now to his destiny and feel under no compulsion to relate the incidents of her nocturnal search.  Had he been there, she would have risked the meeting, urged him to surrender and then left him if he allowed her to do so.  She would never have given him up, or broken her promise to keep his secret.

But the chamber under the roof was large and she did not leave it without making sure that he was neither hiding nor sleeping within it.  She entered, lighted her candle and examined a triangular recess formed by the converging beams of the roof above her and the joists under her feet.