For hours he hardly stirred. He could not sleep. He could only lie in a trance of misery. He saw no gleam of hope, no chance of escape from this terrible place. Yet, to stay on here, week after week, month after month, perhaps even as some had done year after year! Could he bear it? Through all previous troubles Roy had borne up bravely; but at last his spirit gave way beneath the strain.
Molly’s face came up before his mind—not Molly the sedate and ladylike maiden of sixteen, but Molly the little eager girl whom he remembered. O to see her again! Roy pressed his face closer into the folded arms, writhing silently.
Then his mother’s face—he hardly dared to think of that. What would not she suffer? unknowing, indeed, what her boy had to endure; but fearing and conjecturing the worst, so far as she had knowledge to picture that worst. Would any picturings of hers approach the reality?
A wild craving for Denham had him next in its grasp. If Denham had but been arrested too—had but come with him! But that unworthy wish lasted not ten seconds. Upon it came a nobler rush of gladness that Denham was not here. The worn face came up before Roy, as he had seen it but a few days sooner; and below his breath he sobbed in an ecstasy of thankfulness, that at least Denham would be in comparative comfort, that at least he had not to be in this dungeon.
“Think how your mother will be praying for you.”
Was that Denham speaking? Roy seemed to hear the words, not only with his mind, but with his bodily ears.
He sat up and looked round upon the slumbering throng—looked with smarting eyes into the gloom. He gazed into the blackness overhead, where a stone roof shut him pitilessly in.
Was his mother praying for him then?—and his father?—and Denham? Would God hear their prayers?
Denham’s voice again, deep and quiet, seemed to breathe around him, “Remember! God is overall!” How long ago was it that he had said those words? Not lately. Was it—when he was ordered off to Valenciennes?
God over all? Ay, even here, even in this dungeon!