The oak door to the execution shed was still closed. So was the other one. "Stannard! Are you all right?"
To his relief he heard the "Yes! Quite!" of the other's unmistakable tones, muffled by the oak door.' But in the voice was a curious wild inflection which in his relief he did not stop to analyze.
He groped for the key in his pocket, but hesitated. He would not offer Stannard the insult of asking whether he wanted to be let out
What vaguely puzzled Martin, as he returned to his seat was the fact that he had been able to sleep in the place of bogles. But this wasn't the place of bogles. Wasn't there some legend about iron, cold iron, keeping them off?
It was within the rules, both stated and implied, to sleep if you could. You could drowse in the rocking-chair, or even on the ruddy gallows-trap. Martin hung the lamp on the wall again, his hand heavy.
When he leaned back against the wall, he felt no sense of crick in the neck or stiffness in the back. His senses were padded. Once more, from here, he bellowed out at Stannard; and very, faintly Stannard's voice told him to mind his own damned business.
‘Right you are, Mr. Great Defender.
Sleep coiled insidiously, sleep soothed with shadow narcotics.
Though it might have been unusual under such circumstances, Martin afterwards remembered his dreams as being cozy and pleasant. He became somehow entangled with the love-scene between Blanche and Denis in The Sire de Mallétroit’s Door; and the old Sire de Mallétroit, who was going to hang somebody in the morning, bore a baffling, dissolving resemblance to Lady Brayle. The old Sire de Mallétroit…
Look out! Thud!