At last the porter stayed his steps and held up his hand; she saw it gleaming redly against the bright white light cast by his torch.
“This is the place folk most wants to come and gloat over,” he observed in a half joking tone.
They were on the threshold of a low vaulted chamber, and a moment later he and Jean were standing in the middle of the otherwise empty, windowless crypt-like room, by what looked like an enormous kitchen table, excepting that it was made of stone. Jean’s guide threw the light of his torch right on to the gray, stained surface, and she saw that into the stone two deep ruts had been cut, one each way.
“Folk were drawn and quartered on this ’ere table,” he explained, “and not so very long ago, missie! The last lot done ’ere was a batch of what they called ‘the rebels,’ those Scotchies who reckoned they wanted another king. Just before my time they used to keep ’ere, careless-like on the table, the big knife and fork with which they quartered the poor wretches. But now they’re put away in what’s called Grendon Museum.”
As if talking to himself, he went on musingly: “’Anging’s a sight more merciful than the old ways they ’ad of doing men and women to death. That I always will maintain. But a ’anging’s a gruesome sight. Maybe we’ll have time for me to take you just round to see the gallows. Leastways you won’t see much! Only a kind of platform, you know—that’s where they’re turned off. It’s just off the new prison.”
And then the good man felt considerably startled, for the girl he had supposed to be by his side staring down at the stone table had disappeared!
He flashed his torchlight round the stone walls, and with relief perceived that she was leaning up against the side of the arched entrance which gave into the black passage way.
Her face was drawn, and very pale, and all at once he remembered her relation with the man who, it was confidently expected by most of the people connected with Grendon Prison, would be the next poor wretch to be “turned off.”
“Bless my soul!” he exclaimed, “I oughtn’t to have said that. I clean forgot about your friend, missie. What a fool I am to be sure!”
There was a tone of deep dismay and regret in the voice in which he uttered these words.