Godfrey was essentially of a hopeful nature, and always looked at the bright side of things. He was a strong believer in the adage, "Where there is a will, there is a way." He had been in his full share of scrapes at school, and had always made a rule of taking things easily. He now examined the cell.
"Beastly place!" he said, "and horribly damp. I wonder why dungeons are always damp. Cellars at home are not damp, and a dungeon is nothing but a cellar after all. Well, I shall take a nap."
The next day Godfrey was again taken before the tribunal, and again closely questioned as to his knowledge of the Nihilists. He again insisted that he knew nothing of them.
"Of course I knew Akim Soushiloff and Petroff Stepanoff; but I had only been in their rooms once before, and the only person I met there before was the young woman who called herself Katia, but who you say was somebody else. This was at the lodgings they occupied before."
"But you were found with Alexander Kinkoff and Paul Kousmitch."
"They only arrived a short time before the police entered. I had never seen either of them before."
These two prisoners had been examined before Godfrey entered, and had been questioned about him. Kousmitch had declared that he had never seen him before, and the court knew that the spies who had been watching the house had seen him enter but a short time before the police force arrived. As the two statements had been made independently it was thought probable that in this respect Godfrey was speaking the truth. Not so, however, his assertions that he was unacquainted with any of the other conspirators.
He was again taken back to his cell, and for the next week saw no one but the warder who brought his bread and water, and who did not reply by a single word to any questions that he asked him. Godfrey did his best to keep up his spirits. He had learnt by heart at Shrewsbury the first two books of the Iliad, and these he daily repeated aloud, set himself equations to do, and solved them in his head, repeated the dates in Greek history, and went through everything he could remember as having learned.
He occasionally heard footsteps above him, and wondered whether that also was a cell, and what sort of man the prisoner was. Once or twice at night, when all was quiet, he heard loud cries, and wondered whether they were the result of delirium or torture. His gruff jailer was somewhat won by his cheerfulness. Every day Godfrey wished him good morning as he visited the cell, inquired what the weather was like outside, expressed an earnest hope that silence didn't disagree with him, and generally joked and laughed as if he rather enjoyed himself than otherwise. At the end of the week an official entered the cell.
"I have come to inform you, prisoner, that the sentence of death that had been passed upon you has, by the clemency of the Czar, been commuted to banishment for life to Siberia."