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 from the edge. He could see, moreover, that it quivered slightly in the light breeze as it rested there; and at once a faint hope stirred in him.

His eyes remained fixed on the window, while his hearing groped for each stealthy sound that came from the courtyard beyond the fence. He heard the man who had thrown the little white ball make his way out of the courtyard through a gate that opened on an alley behind the inn. Each moment he expected to see Falcon appear at the window; but the small square of light remained empty, and presently Lachlan knew that fortune favoured him so far—that if the occupant of the room was in it at the time, he remained unaware of the white ball that had been tossed upward out of the darkness and that now rested precariously on the sill of his open window.

Lachlan realized that he could only play a waiting game. He chose to wait, however, in the now empty courtyard instead of in the street where some belated passer-by might interrupt his vigil. Scaling the fence, he dropped to the ground on the other side, and finding a seat behind a holly bush, he remained in that leafy ambush, hoping that some lucky chance might solve his problem for him.

For a long while thunder had been muttering in the distance, and Lachlan knew that sooner or later a squall would break. In this squall, he judged from the direction of the thunder, the wind would blow from the east; and it was for this that he waited,