“That’ll do,” he said to himself, with a half-laugh. “I’m satisfied; so now I’ll have something to eat.”
The evening was closing in as he seated himself upon the straw and began his meal, listening the while for some sign of the presence of Adela under his prison window, but he listened in vain. There was the evening song of the thrush, and he could hear poultry and the distant grunting of his friend the pig. Now and then, too, there came through the window the soft cooing of the pigeons on the roof, but otherwise there was not a sound, and the place might have been deserted by human kind.
“So much the better for me,” he said, “if I want to escape;” and having at last finished his meal, he placed the remains on one side for use in the morning, and tried to find a likely stone in the floor for loosening, but he had to give up because it was so dark, and climbed up once more to the window to gaze out now at the stars, which moment by moment grew brighter in the east.
There was something very soft and beautiful in the calm of the summer night, but it oppressed him with its solitude. In one place he could see a faint ray of light, apparently from some cottage window; but that soon went out, and the scene that had been so bright in the morning was now shrouded in a gloom which almost hid the nearest trees.
Now and then he could hear a splash in the moat made by fish or water-vole, and once or twice he saw the star-bejewelled surface twinkle and move as if some creature were swimming across; but soon that was all calm again, and the booming, buzzing noise of some great beetle sweeping by on reckless wing sounded quite loud.
“It’s as lively as keeping the middle watch,” said Hilary impatiently. “The best thing I can do is to go to sleep.”
Hilary Leigh was one not slow to act upon his convictions, and getting down he proceeded to make himself as snug a nest as he could in the straw, lay down, pulled some of it over him, to the great bedusting of his uniform, and in five minutes he was fast asleep.