As George tossed about uneasily that night in the straw, he now and then dreamed fitfully that he was back once more in camp drilling his company, and again that he was at Stanham Mills, setting traps with his brother along the banks of the roaring brook. Suddenly he felt something hard beneath him. It was the bag of gold! Prisoners who could pay lived in quite a different fashion from the impoverished wretches who were compelled to take what was given them.
He could not imagine why they had not searched his pockets, but the ceremony had been omitted. Running his hand beneath the straw, he found that one of the boards of the floor was loose, leaving a crack that ran almost the entire length of the wall. He took the guineas from the pouch one by one, and placed them in the crack.
When the under-jailer came to the iron grating of his cell the next morning with a stone jug of water in one hand and a loaf of mouldy bread in the other, George extended one of the gold pieces.
"Take this, my man," he said. "You can have more chance to use it than I just now." The man grasped it in his dirty hand, and transferred it quickly to his pocket. At the same time he glanced over his shoulder at the red-coated sentry on the stairway.
"Well, Mr. High and Mighty," he said, drawing back the loaf, "if this bread is not good enough for you, you can go hungry then." He turned as if to walk away, then, walking back, he thrust it through the bars.
"Let me hear no complaints," he went on in a loud tone of voice. "It is good enough fare for such as you."
George could scarcely swallow the rough food. But what was his surprise, in the course of an hour or two, to see the beetle-browed jailer once more before his cell.
"Ho, ho!" he said. "So you have come to your senses. Hand me that stone jug and hold your jaw." As the man extended his hand, George saw that he held a large piece of cold meat and a soft warm biscuit. He took it, and with a parting growl the jailer shuffled away with the empty pitcher.
It seemed to George that the day would never pass. Strange sounds echoed through the building—curses and ribald songs, and now and then the clanking of heavy iron-latched doors. He heard at times the voices of the guards as they exchanged their posts. The only light that entered his little cell came through the window, in the corridor. There was no outlook, and his wounded arm throbbed with pain. Late in the evening the surgeon came again, and the head jailer accompanied him, carrying in his hand a tin lantern. The dim light from the perforations danced in a hundred little spots along the gloomy walls.
After the surgeon had dressed the wound, which he did in silence, and the door had clanged again behind him, George heard him speak to the jailer further down the corridor.