For answer the man turned upon his heel and stalked out of the place without a word.
“Get out, you rude boor!” cried Hilary, as the door slammed and the key turned. “Kill me and bury me! Bah! I should like to see them do it.”
A faint noise outside made him scale the window once more; but there was no sign of Adela, so he returned.
“Well, they’re not going to starve me,” he said to himself, as he looked at the plates before him, one containing a good-looking pork pasty, the others a loaf and a big piece of butter, while a large brown jug was half full of milk.
There was a couple of knives, too, the larger and stronger of which he took and thrust beneath the straw.
“What a piggish way of treating a fellow!” he muttered. “No chair, no table; not so much as a stool. Well, I’m not very hungry yet, and as this is to last till to-morrow I may as well wait.”
He stood thinking for a bit, and then the idea of escaping came more strongly than ever, and he went and examined the door, which seemed strong enough to resist a battering-ram.
There was the window as the only other likely weak place, but on climbing up and again testing the mortar with the point of his knife, the result was disheartening, for the cement of the good old times hardened into something far more difficult to deal with than stone. In fact, he soon found that he would be more likely to escape by sawing through the bars or digging through the stone.
“Well, I mean to get out if Lipscombe don’t send and fetch me; and I’ll let them see that I’m not quite such a tame animal as to settle down to my cage without some effort;” and as he spoke he looked up at the ceiling as being a likely place to attack.
He had the satisfaction of seeing that it was evidently weak, and that with the exercise of a little ingenuity there would be no difficulty in cutting a way through.