"This has been a prison for some poor soul," Mr. Shelton said aloud as he noticed the iron bars that guarded the window.
He went out shuddering as if with cold, and advanced to the next room.
The door was locked, but the key had been left upon the outside.
He turned it hastily and stepped over the threshold, half-expecting to find some poor creature incarcerated within.
But silence and gloom greeted him here also.
The room was bare and dreary as the ones he had quitted. A bed and a chair comprised its furniture, and heavy bars of iron secured the solitary window.
"What a horrible prison house," he exclaimed. "And what dreadful deeds of darkness have perhaps been committed within these old walls."
He went to the window and peered out through the heavy bars at the tangled garden. It was faded and dying now, and the russet leaves of autumn strewed the deserted paths.
"My God, what was that?" he exclaimed with a violent start.
A strange sound had grated upon his ears—the distinct clank of a heavy chain and the smothered moan of a human voice.