At one moment she felt sure that Kennard had called to her by name.  She heard his voice distinctly, raised as if in a despairing cry.

After that, all was still.

So still that she could hear her heart beating furiously, and then a tear falling from her eyes upon her open book.  So still that the gentle patter of the rain sounded like a soothing lullaby.  She was very young, and was very tired.  Out, above the line of sloping roofs and chimney pots, the darkness of the sky was yielding to the first touch of dawn.  The rain ceased.  Everything became deathly still.  Esther’s head fell, wearied, upon her folded arms.

Then, suddenly, she was wide awake.  Something had roused her.  A noise.  At first she could not tell what it was, but now she knew.  It was the opening and shutting of the door behind her, and then a quick, stealthy footstep across the room.  The horror of it all was unspeakable.  Esther remained as she had been, on her knees, mechanically fingering her prayer-book, unable to move, unable to utter a sound, as if paralysed.  She knew that one of those abominable creatures had entered her room, was coming near her even now.  She did not know who it was, only guessed it was Rateau, for she heard a raucous, stertorous wheeze.  Yet she could not have then turned to look if her life had depended upon her doing so.

The whole thing had occurred in less than half a dozen heart-beats.  The next moment the wretch was close to her.  Mercifully she felt that her senses were leaving her.  Even so, she felt that a handkerchief was being bound over her mouth to prevent her screaming.  Wholly unnecessary this, for she could not have uttered a sound.  Then she was lifted off the ground and carried across the room, then over the threshold.  A vague, subconscious effort of will helped her to keep her head averted from that wheezing wretch who was carrying her.  Thus she could see the landing, and two of those abominable watchdogs who had been set to guard her.

The ghostly grey light of dawn came peeping in through the narrow dormer window in the sloping roof, and faintly illumined their sprawling forms, stretched out at full length, with their heads buried in their folded arms and their naked legs looking pallid and weird in the dim light.  Their stertorous breathing woke the echoes of the bare, stone walls.  Esther shuddered and closed her eyes.  She was now like an insentient log, without power, or thought, or will—­almost without feeling.

Then, all at once, the coolness of the morning air caught her full in the face.  She opened her eyes and tried to move, but those powerful arms held her more closely than before.  Now she could have shrieked with horror.  With returning consciousness the sense of her desperate position came on her with its full and ghastly significance, its awe-inspiring details.  The grey dawn, the abandoned wretch who held her, and the stillness of this early morning hour, when not one pitying soul would be astir to lend her a helping hand or give her the solace of mute sympathy.  So great, indeed, was this stillness that the click of the man’s sabots upon the uneven pavement reverberated, ghoul-like and weird.