"Still expecting her pardon?"
"'Deed she is, poor bogh, and listening for Mr. Gell's feet to fetch it. Now she thinks he'll come in the morning. 'Something tells me he'll come at daybreak,' she said, and that's the for she's gone to sleep."
They had reached the guard-room, where a fire was burning, and an old oak armchair (once the seat of the Kings of Man) was drawn up in front of the hearth.
"Gone to sleep, has she? I must see her though. I have something to tell her."
"Is it the pardon itself, Sir? Has it come then?"
"Not yet, but a telegram may come from London at any moment."
"You don't say?"
"Give me your key, and sit here and make your supper" (a kettle was singing on the hob), "and if you hear the bell you will go off to the gate immediately."
"I will that, Sir."
At the end of a long corridor Stowell stopped at a cell that had a label on the door-post ("Elizabeth Corteen, Murder. Death") and looked in through the grill. In the dim light he saw the prisoner lying on her plank bed under her brown prison blanket. With a tremor of the heart he opened the door quietly and closed it behind him.