It was sheer hunger that at last disturbed him, and feeling stiff and miserable he raised himself, looking in a bewildered way round the room. The moonlight shone in patches on the grim stone walls, and on the strange spectacle of the prisoners lying in rows on the bare floor. The dismal sound of clanking fetters echoed through the place, when some of the men, who for attempted escape were heavily ironed, stirred in their sleep. The man with the fever was muttering and groaning horribly.
A sudden wave of realisation swept over Gabriel. He was in prison, and must starve and pine, and as likely as not die, in this horrible place, no longer a free agent, but wholly at the mercy of tyrants. The bitterness of death seemed already to overwhelm him.
“Let me out! Let me out!” moaned the sick man in his delirium “My house is burning—my children—my wife! How can you do it, you fiends? Let me go home, I say! Let me out!”
Gabriel roused himself from the despair into which he had fallen, and picking his way cautiously across the forms of the sleeping prisoners, sat down beside the man with the fever. There was still a little water left in the earthenware mug near him, and, raising the poor fellow into an easier posture, he held this to his parched lips.
“Where do you come from?” he asked.
“From Marlborough,” said the man, speaking rationally for a minute. “I was one of the wealthiest of the burgesses; my name is Rawlyns.” Then suddenly relapsing into his fevered ravings, “Let me out! Let me out! They are burning my home.”
“I came from Marlborough yesterday, and there was no house burning,” said Gabriel soothingly. “Come, be at rest, you’ll need all your strength.”
His quiet words, and perhaps some subtle magnetism in his hands as he smoothed back the sick man’s hair, certainly calmed the poor fellow. The Hereford people always declared that Dr. Harford had what they called “the healing touch,” and possibly Gabriel had inherited a similar power. At any rate, the patient fell into a sound sleep, and his sore need had done much to chase despair from the mind of his helper.
Noiselessly he stole back to his former place and once more lay down, and as he mused over past and future there suddenly flashed into his mind the perception that here and now in this distasteful present the wish of his childhood had been granted. He had longed to be like his hero Sir John Eliot, and to give his life for the country’s freedom; and now, like Eliot, he was to languish in prison, debarred from air and exercise and all that makes life sweet.
Gazing at the sharp contrasts of shadow and moonlight on the Castle wall, an indescribable sense of strength and consolation came to him; for he grasped the truth that, however the war ended, even if for awhile utter defeat and ruin should overwhelm the cause, in the future Justice was bound to triumph, being Divine, and every sacrifice honestly made in her cause would prove to have been infinitely worth while, and would hearten future generations to resist everything which threatened the liberties so dearly bought.