walls, in a twinkling.

With eager eyes and strained attention, Mr Haredale saw him chained, and
locked and barred up in his cell. Nay, when he had left the jail, and
stood in the free street, without, he felt the iron plates upon the
doors, with his hands, and drew them over the stone wall, to assure
himself that it was real; and to exult in its being so strong, and
rough, and cold. It was not until he turned his back upon the jail, and
glanced along the empty streets, so lifeless and quiet in the bright
morning, that he felt the weight upon his heart; that he knew he was
tortured by anxiety for those he had left at home; and that home itself
was but another bead in the long rosary of his regrets.

Chapter 62

The prisoner, left to himself, sat down upon his bedstead: and resting
his elbows on his knees, and his chin upon his hands, remained in
that attitude for hours. It would be hard to say, of what nature his
reflections were. They had no distinctness, and, saving for some
flashes now and then, no reference to his condition or the train of
circumstances by which it had been brought about. The cracks in the
pavement of his cell, the chinks in the wall where stone was joined
to stone, the bars in the window, the iron ring upon the floor,--such
things as these, subsiding strangely into one another, and awakening an
indescribable kind of interest and amusement, engrossed his whole mind;
and although at the bottom of his every thought there was an uneasy
sense of guilt, and dread of death, he felt no more than that vague
consciousness of it, which a sleeper has of pain. It pursues him through
his dreams, gnaws at the heart of all his fancied pleasures, robs the
banquet of its taste, music of its sweetness, makes happiness itself
unhappy, and yet is no bodily sensation, but a phantom without shape,
or form, or visible presence; pervading everything, but having no
existence; recognisable everywhere, but nowhere seen, or touched, or met
with face to face, until the sleep is past, and waking agony returns.

After a long time the door of his cell opened. He looked up; saw the
blind man enter; and relapsed into his former position.

Guided by his breathing, the visitor advanced to where he sat; and
stopping beside him, and stretching out his hand to assure himself that
he was right, remained, for a good space, silent.

'This is bad, Rudge. This is bad,' he said at length.

The prisoner shuffled with his feet upon