“Keep quite still, Mike,” he said. “He’s just trying to find out how much we can see of his tower, I’m sure!”
Mr. Diaz drew back after a while. Dimmy rang the breakfast bell again downstairs, and Peggy came bounding up the winding staircase to find out what the boys were doing.
That day the children began their three-hourly watches - and it was just as Peggy was taking over from Jack about six o’clock that evening that they first saw the Prisoner!
Jack had been carving a wooden boat with his penknife, sitting patiently for three hours at one side of the window so that Mr. Diaz would not catch sight of him if he should happen to look out once more. Every minute or two Jack glanced over to the distant tower, but he had seen no one there.
Then Peggy came running up the stairs to take her turn at watching - and just as Jack was getting up from his chair, and Peggy was picking up her knitting, they both happened to glance at the far window.
And they both saw the same thing!
“It’s a little boy!” said Jack, in the greatest astonishment. “He doesn’t look more than seven or eight!”
“He doesn’t look English,” said Peggy. “Even from here he looks very dark-haired and dark-eyed.”
The little boy in the distant tower leaned on the window-sill. Jack took up the field-glasses that lay near at hand and looked through them. He could then see the little boy looking as near as if he were in the garden of Peep-Hole!
“He looks awfully pale and miserable.” said Jack. “Almost as if he were crying!”