Thus in time she was creeping along again, feeling the dark stone as before and peering vainly and desperately into the shadows which lay so densely upon the whole enclosure. Hastily she traversed the whole length of the wall. She arrived at the far end, ready to sink down and cry in anguish. She had not discovered the window.
Back again she went, choking back hysterical sobs and bruising her delicate hands on the rough rocks, as she played with her fingers along that grim, dark pile. She failed again.
Sitting where she was, in the grass, which was growing rank in the place, she clasped her hands in despair. She would have to give it up. There was some mistake. There was no window.
Yet once more she would try. She could not give it up. The dungeon’s horrors and the terrible character of Edward Randolph made her fear that if the morning came before Adam was free, he would no longer have need for freedom, nor light.
Slowly, this time, and digging at the base of the stone-wall that rose above her, she felt down to the very roots of the grass, for the aperture which represented a window. To her unspeakable joy, her fingers suddenly ran into an absolute hole in the solid rock, in a matted growth of roots and grass, which had grown up about it!
She sank down, momentarily overcome with this discovery. It was too much to believe. She felt she was almost dying, so insupportable was the agitation of her heart. But she presently clutched at the grass and tore it away in a mad fever of haste. She dug, with her fingers and her finger nails. She could smell the odor of the bruised grass, and then the wholesome fragrance of earth. She had soon uncovered a small square opening, no larger, as the jailer’s wife had said, than a good-sized hand.
On her knees as she was, she bent her head down to a level with the hole and put her lips close to the opening. She tried to speak, but such a faintness came upon her that she could not utter a sound. She had worked with a tremendous resolution toward this end, and now the flood of thoughts of everything said and done that evening, came upon her and rendered her dumb, with emotion and dread.
Making a great effort she essayed to speak again. Once more she failed. But she waited doggedly, for the power she knew would not desert her in the end. Thus for the third time she mustered all her strength and leaned down to the window.
“Adam,” she said, faintly, and then she waited, breathlessly.
There was no response. There was not a sound from that tomb, the dankness of which she now began to detect in her nostrils.