On this particular Sunday no prisoner felt disposed to place himself on the sick list. Quite the contrary. For, on the other hand, many prisoners who were really ill, in the infirmary, declared themselves well enough to get up and go to chapel.
The reason of their sudden zeal in the performance of their religious duties was simply this: The "condemned sermon," as it was called, was to be preached that day. And the condemned man, who was to be executed in the morning, was to be present under guard. And people generally have a morbid curiosity to gaze upon a man who is doomed to death.
Lord Vincent was ill enough to be exempt from the duty of appearing in the chapel, and haughty enough to recoil from mixing publicly with his fellow-prisoners; but he was intensely anxious to see Frisbie and judge for himself, from the man's appearance, whether he seemed likely to make a confession.
And so, when the turnkey whose duty it was to attend to this ward came around to unlock the doors and marshal the prisoners in order to march them to the chapel, Lord Vincent, without demur, fell into rank and went with them.
The chapel was small, and the prisoners present on this day filled it full. The set to which Lord Vincent belonged were marched in among the last. Consequently they sat at the lower end of the chapel.
Lord Vincent's height enabled him to look over the heads of most persons present. And he looked around for Frisbie. At length he found him.
The condemned pew was immediately before the pulpit, facing the preacher. In it sat Frisbie, unfettered, but guarded by two turnkeys, one of whom sat on each side of him. But Frisbie's back was towards Lord Vincent, and so the viscount could not possibly get a glimpse of the expression of his face.
He next looked to see if he could find the selfish vixen who had lured him to his ruin, and whom he now hated with all the power of hatred latent in his soul. But a partition eight feet high, running nearly the whole length of the chapel and stopping only within a few feet of the pulpit, separated the women's from the men's side of the church, so that even if she had been present he could not have seen her.
"The wages of sin is death."
Such was the text from which the sermon was preached to the prisoners that day. But the viscount heard scarcely one word of it. Intensely absorbed in his own reflections, he paid no attention to the services. At their close he bent his eyes again upon the form of Frisbie.