“I go off duty after the ‘Evening Gazette’ is issued. The citizen may depend upon me.”
Ned groaned.
“Well,” he said, “what can’t be cured must be endured. But, the earlier the respite, the more generous my acknowledgment.”
He was locked in again; the sentry resumed his tramp; the little window under the ceiling dusked like a drowsing eyelid.
Presently, drugged by utter weariness of brain and nerve, he dozed on one of the rickety chairs, and woke to the glare of a candle, and the presence of his friendly jailer in the room.
“Behold my despatch, citizen!”
He seized the scrap of paper (that bearing his own message), and read, scribbled on the back of it, “I fly to the succour of my dear friend the very moment I may quit myself of a little present business of urgency.”
“Here are thy vails,” said Ned, in a tone of glad relief; “and leave me the candle, my friend. I shall not need it long.”
* * * * * * * *
Up and down—up and down. The shape of the window under the ceiling became intimate to the desolate character of the room, rather than to that segment of the free sky without which it had once appropriated to itself. It was like a regard turned inwards—an eye glazing in the trance of self-inquisition; and as such it was illustrative of the vision of the tormented soul it imprisoned from light.