"Can't they jump over that?"
"They don't try; but run along to another room. There hasn't been one in here since I put it up."
I sat down and busied myself reading till the nine o'clock locking came. When that was accomplished, I went up, up, up the stone stairs to my cell in the roof of the prison.
I laid me down, and from sheer exhaustion fell into a kind of slumber; but my short sleep, if it were sleep, was rank with nightmare, or haunted with the ghosts of my abode. No sooner did I become unconscious, than I was falling from my eyrie to the rocky floor below, or was strapped upon the iron bars that held the prisoners' beds. Visions appeared to my dream-sight that roused me with a start and scream to wakefulness again.
Even such disturbed slumber had hardly got possession of my faculties when a volley of oaths came rolling through my door, and roused me to distinct consciousness.
I sprang from my bed, ran to the door, and called,—
"What is the matter?"
"That bloody Smith snores so that we can't sleep!"
"Where is she? I will go down and wake her."
"On the third division, south side, almost to the foot."