He walked for some distance below the hanging galleries, resounding so often, in days gone by, to the heavy tramp of prisoners marching to their cells.
"It was in here they feasted," he said, indicating a long dismantled room. "Can't I see 'em now, poor devils, each with his bowl of porridge and spoon? No knives because they got into a nasty little habit of laying open each other's blessed visages. Look at the rats banqueting here, whoop!" and he jumped and frightened a squeak from an old graybeard darting by him, and caused Derrice to fall back and shriek nervously.
"Silly child," he said, penitently, "you shouldn't be so nervous. Let's get out of the ugly hole," and he made rapidly toward the stone staircase at the other end of the building.
Derrice ran after him, then drank in the view from the tower, until he challenged her to a return race to the old well in the prison yard. The handicap in their race was twenty seconds, yet he made a wild rush by Derrice on the staircase, and when she arrived at the goal he was leaning coolly on the broken well rim.
She sank breathlessly on a heap of stones, and after laughing at her he wheeled and stared into the well that had long since gone dry.
"I'd like to know what's down there," he said. "It used to be a famous chuck-hole with the blessed martyrs. Every little while the prison authorities had to clean it out to the tune of several bucket loads of souvenirs."
"But what about polluting their supply of drinking water?" asked Derrice, rising, and also leaning over it.
"Jack-knives and letters and photographs and jewelry wouldn't poison them—Hello, what are you trying to do?"
"Oh, my watch, my watch!" uttered Derrice, with a cry of despair." The watch my father gave me."
"What did you throw it down there for?"