There is nothing so dreary as a monologue on which its cadence falls. The even returns of sound seem to show a purpose.
What is it that this hammer, the bell, forges on the anvil of thought?
Ursus counted, vaguely and without motive, the tolling of the knell. Feeling that his thoughts were sliding from him, he made an effort not to let them slip into conjecture. Conjecture is an inclined plane, on which we slip too far to be to our own advantage. Still, what was the meaning of the bell?
He looked through the darkness in the direction in which he knew the gate of the prison to be.
Suddenly, in that very spot which looked like a dark hole, a redness showed. The redness grew larger, and became a light.
There was no uncertainty about it. It soon took a form and angles. The gate of the jail had just turned on its hinges. The glow painted the arch and the jambs of the door. It was a yawning rather than an opening. A prison does not open; it yawns—perhaps from ennui. Through the gate passed a man with a torch in his hand.
The bell rang on. Ursus felt his attention fascinated by two objects. He watched—his ear the knell, his eye the torch. Behind the first man the gate, which had been ajar, enlarged the opening suddenly, and allowed egress to two other men; then to a fourth. This fourth was the wapentake, clearly visible in the light of the torch. In his grasp was his iron staff.
Following the wapentake, there filed and opened out below the gateway in order, two by two, with the rigidity of a series of walking posts, ranks of silent men.
This nocturnal procession stepped through the wicket in file, like a procession of penitents, without any solution of continuity, with a funereal care to make no noise—gravely, almost gently. A serpent issues from its hole with similar precautions.
The torch threw out their profiles and attitudes into relief. Fierce looks, sullen attitudes.