The man spoke as one might speak, not ill-naturedly, but with the superior wisdom of a senior to a fractious child. Mr. Tennant knew that he was not understood; that it was no use to attempt to make himself understood. His mind was in a chaos. What was he to do?
It had come to him in a flash of revelation that he had been made the subject of some hideous mockery, the victim of some malevolent plot; that he had been racked and re-racked for nothing at all; that he had stood his trial for the murder of a woman, who, all the time, was actually alive; that the law had committed some grotesque blunder; that he had been condemned to be hung for another person's crime.
What was he to do?
He did nothing till he was back again in gaol. In the condemned cell this time. Nobody had told him, but he knew what it was. He knew that here a long line of murderers had awaited their fate, that here he would be kept until he was hung.
A natural shudder shook him as he realised that they were about to thrust him into this last abiding-place of the damned. He felt that if he did not speak so as to make himself understood before they had him fast in there he would never have a chance to speak at all: That if that door clanged upon his silence, hope, for him, would have died with its clangour.
He turned to the warder.
"I wish to see the governor."
"You can't see the governor now."
"I must. Listen to me." He tried to restrain his emotion, to hold himself in hand. "Some extraordinary error has taken place. Just as I was leaving the court I saw the woman whom I am charged with having killed."
The warder stared, as if inclined to laugh.