Probing about in the dusk, he found the doorway that led into the ruined hall, and in the corner of the hall the rough stone stair and door that gave access to the tower. It might have seemed simpler to have set to work straightway upon that door, but he chose the safer, slower method of forcing the window and then working from within.
The rope was dangling from within reach when John Gore returned to the foot of the tower, and he went up it hand over hand with the tools slung behind him by the scarf. He was soon under Barbara’s window, where the rope ran taut over the sill, and, reaching in for a grip of the bars, he called to her in a whisper.
“I am here, John, waiting.”
He felt the wind on his back, and guessed how miserably cold that room must be.
“Poor heart, the blood must be numb in you.”
“No, John, not quite.”
“Let me have your hands, dear.”
He lay in on the window-ledge with his face against the bars, and stretched his arms in. His hands groped for hers and found them, and of a truth they were like ice.
“Why, my life, you are all a-shiver!”
She was shuddering a little—half with the cold, half with a deep thrill from within.