Let us now take a peep at John in prison. Poor fellow! He had not slept a wink all night. He rose worn and languid. Disdaining his frugal breakfast of bread and water, with arms folded, eyes fixed and head sunk upon his breast, he paced dejectedly up and down the narrow limits of his cell.
"Is this John Archer?" he soliloquised. "Is this the man once surrounded by friends, the hope and pride of his parents, the favoured servant of Lord Edgedown, honoured and respected by all, now handcuffed and led off to prison on a charge of murder to await an ignominious trial, and probably be condemned to hang by the neck till he is dead in the presence of a jeering rabble? It cannot be. I must be transformed. I must be dreaming. This is not John Archer. Is John Archer a murderer? Can I really have committed a murder in a state of delirium which has obliterated all recollection of the crime committed? It must be so. How else could I have slept all night on the bare ground and on awaking find my gun discharged, my clothes bloodstained, and even the butt end of my rifle besmeared with blood?
"How is all this to be accounted for? I must have committed murder. Who will believe me if I assert my innocence, or how will the law be brought to look upon the crime as committed during temporary insanity? No; I shall be found guilty, condemned, and executed. I do believe that the vision of last night that appeared to me bearing the form and features of Claribel was my guardian angel come to apprise me of my doom.
"Oh, Claribel, Claribel! must we then for ever be parted? But what was that vision? Claribel in the flesh? For so it appeared; for sure it was no dream, yet how could that be? Could she herself have broken through bolts and bars or obtained a pass to speak to me alone? Impossible! Was it, perchance, some fiend having taken upon himself the likeness of those divine features in order so to mock me? Or was it merely an hallucination of my distempered brain? Whatever it was, I would that it were here again so that I might feast my eyes once more upon its lovely features ere I die."
He paused suddenly, for now, whether it were some trick of the senses, some hallucination conjured up by his over-excited brain, in the opposite corner of his cell something like a bluish vapour appeared, which seemed to grow denser, to solidify until it grew into the semblance of a human form, bearing the features of—whom?
"Claribel!" gasped out the prisoner, hardly above his breath, for his voice died within him and he remained awe-stricken. "What! Do I rave? Oh, beauteous image! Claribel! Claribel! Tell me, oh, my guardian angel, hast thou come to announce my doom, to solace my last moments? Oh, if it be thou indeed, Claribel, in the flesh and no delusion of my senses, come to me, let me feel the pressure of thy hand."
At this moment he sprang forward and attempted to seize the hand of the figure, which he had no sooner touched than it melted in his grasp, causing him to feel such a supernatural terror that he staggered backwards and gave an involuntary shriek.
The figure put its finger to its lip, the forefinger of the very hand that had vanished into thin air at the material touch of John Archer, but which had immediately resumed its previously defined form upon the withdrawing of Archer's hand.
"Angel or fiend!" he exclaimed. "Whatever thou art, that comest to me in this lovely guise, declare thy mission, unveil to me the future, and spare not mine ears if my doom be sealed. If there be hope——"
Here the figure again put its finger to its lip in token of silence, for Archer, now somewhat over his first surprise, spoke no longer in a husky whisper, but in a loud voice.