.

AGAINST THE WALL.
In a room beside the gateway, into which, as the nearest and most convenient place, Count Hannibal had been carried from his saddle, a man sat sideways in the narrow embrasure of a loophole, to which his eyes seemed glued.

The room, which formed part of the oldest block of the chateau, and was ordinarily the quarters of the Carlats, possessed two other windows, deep-set indeed, yet superior to that through which Bigot--for he it was--peered so persistently.

But the larger windows looked southwards, across the bay--at this moment the noon-high sun was pouring his radiance through them; while the object which held Bigot's gaze and fixed him to his irksome seat, lay elsewhere.

The loophole commanded the causeway leading shorewards; through it the Norman could see who came and went, and even the cross-beam of the ugly object which rose where the causeway touched the land.
On a flat truckle-bed behind the door lay Count Hannibal, his injured leg protected from the coverlid by a kind of cage.