Not waiting for his order to be executed, the spick-and-span wearer of the unsoiled surplice disappeared into one of the side rooms of the court.
This extraordinary scene might have resulted in a yet more rigorous treatment of the prisoners, but it produced the opposite effect. Within the same hour Ralph and Sim were removed from Doomsdale and imprisoned in a room high up in the Donjon tower.
Their new abode was in every way more tolerable than the old one. It had no fire, and it enjoyed the questionable benefit of being constantly filled with nearly all the smoke of every fire beneath it. The dense clouds escaped in part through a hole in the wall where a stone had been disturbed. This aperture also served the less desirable purpose of admitting the rain and the wind.
Here the days were passed. They were few and short. Doomsdale itself could not have made them long.
With his long streaky hair hanging wild about his temples, Sim sat hour after hour on a low bench beneath the window, crying at intervals that God would not let them die.
CHAPTER XLVI. THE SKEIN UNRAVELLED.
It was Thursday when they were condemned, and the sentence was to be carried into effect on the Thursday following. Saturday, Sunday, and Monday passed by without any event of consequence. On Tuesday the under gaoler opened the door of their prison, and the sheriff entered. Ralph stepped out face to face with him. Sim crept closer into the shadow.
“The King's warrant has arrived,” he said abruptly.
“And is this all you come to tell us?” said Ralph, no less curtly.