He crept close to the newel, leaving the great width of the stair free, but the steps of the earl went upward.

Donal descended, sat down again at the bottom of the stair, and began again to wait.

No sound came to him through the rest of the night.

The slow hours rolled away, and the slow light drew nearer.

Now and then he was on the point of falling into a doze, but would suddenly start wide awake, listening through a silence that seemed to fill the whole universe and deepen around the castle.
At length he was aware that the darkness had, unobserved of him, grown weaker--that the approach of the light was sickening it: the dayspring was about to take hold of the ends of the earth that the wicked might be shaken out of its lap.