Nine feet long and six wide was the underground cellar wherein they had plunged our hero.
In this space, a select company was already assembled, eighteen individuals all told. And Mathias Ráby now made the nineteenth in the already overcrowded cell, and how he was to find a place there was a knotty problem. It was lucky that the window over the door was not filled with glass, but with an iron grating, which let in some air.
As a matter-of-fact, this cell was the best in the whole Assembly House, as could be testified to by old Tsajkos, the eldest of the prisoners, who was now quartered here. He was an old acquaintance of our hero, by the way, and Ráby had often provided the old man with tobacco, a luxury which the prisoners were not allowed to smoke, but might chew, if they could get it.
Nor was Tsajkos long in recognising the new-comer. He limped up to him, rattling the heavy chains he wore on his legs, and clapped Ráby on the back in greeting, while the other occupants of the cell looked on in wide-eyed amazement.
"So you have come to it at last, have you, my young friend? Now who would have thought the likes of you would ever have tumbled into this company? Why, I've always known you to be a well-brought-up fellow, who never eat an apple that was not peeled. What can they have against you, I should like to know? 'Not guilty' may do well enough up above there, but you know as well as I, it does not do down here. Folks don't come to a place like this for nothing, we all know that! Now tell us what it is."
Disgust and repulsion almost choked Ráby's powers of speech. He covered his face with his hands.
"Come now, none of that sort of thing! We want no blubbering here. Don't disgrace the company. If you want to cry, be off to the women's prison; we know you've got two wives already there!"
At this, the whole crew yelled with hoarse laughter.
"Aha!" exclaimed a voice from the furthest corner. "So that's the celebrated husband, is it? Well, I can tell you what he's here for; the women themselves told me, and they had it from the heydukes; he is a spy."
At these words, the whole band were roused to sudden uproar. "A spy! a traitor!" they yelled in chorus. "He'll strangle us at night. Let's squeeze the life out of him now."