Sabina watched him in silence for a long time, vaguely wondering when he would be tired and would be obliged to stop and rest.  Somehow, it was impossible to feel that the situation was really horrible, while such a man was toiling before her eyes to set her free.  From the first, she was perfectly sure that he would succeed, but she had not at all understood what the actual labour must be.

He had used his pickaxe for more than half an hour, and had made a hollow about a foot and a half deep, when he rested on the shaft of the tool, and listened attentively.  If the wall were not enormously thick, and if any one were working on the other side, he was sure that he could hear the blows, even above the roar of the water.  But he could distinguish no sound.

The water came in steadily from the full well, a stream filling the passage beyond the dark chasm into which it was falling, and at least six inches deep.  It sent back the light of the lantern in broken reflections and shivered gleams.  Sabina did not like to look that way.

She was cold, now, and she felt that her clothes were damp, and a strange drowsiness came over her, brought on by the monotonous tone of the water.  Malipieri had taken up his crowbar.

“I wonder what time it is,” Sabina said, before he struck the wall again.

He looked at his watch.

“It is six o’clock,” he answered, trying to speak cheerfully.  “It is not at all late yet.  Are you hungry?”

“Oh, no!  We never dine till eight.”

“But you are cold?”

“A little.  It is no matter.”

“If you will get up I will put my waistcoat on the board for you to sit upon, and then you can put my coat over your shoulders.  I am too hot.”

“Thank you.”

She obeyed, and he made her as comfortable as he could, a forlorn little figure in her fawn-coloured hat, wrapped in his grey tweed coat, that looked utterly shapeless on her.

“Courage,” he said, as he picked up his crowbar.

“I am not afraid,” she answered.

“Most women would be.”

He went to work again, with the end of the heavy bar, striking regularly at the deepest part of the hollow, and working the iron round and round, to loosen the brick wherever that was possible.  But he made slow progress, horribly slow, as Sabina realized when nearly half an hour had passed again, and he paused to listen.  He was much more alarmed than he would allow her to guess, for he was now quite convinced that Masin was not working on the other side; he knew that his strength would never be equal to breaking through, unless the crowbar ran suddenly into an open space beyond, within the next half-hour.  The wall might be of any thickness, perhaps as much as six or seven feet, and the bricks were very hard and were well cemented.  Perhaps, too, he had made a mistake in his rough calculations and was not working at the right spot after all.  He was possibly hammering