I sank, and when morning came felt sorry that the light should
shine into my narrow cell, and rouse me from my stupor. When the turnkey
entered to bring me breakfast, I turned towards the wall, and trembled
lest he should speak to me; and it was with a strange thrill I heard the
door close as he went out. The abandonment of one's sorrow--that daily,
hourly indulgence in grief which the uncheered solitude of a prison
begets--soon brings the mind to the narrow range of one or two topics.
With the death of hope, all fancy and imagination perish, the springs of
all speculation are dried up, and every faculty bent towards one point;
the reason, like a limb unexercised, wastes and pines, and becomes
paralyzed.

Now and then the thought would flash across me, "What if this were
madness?"--and I shuddered not at the thought. Such had my prison made
me.

Four days and nights passed over thus,--a long, monotonous dream, in
which I counted not the time,--and I lay upon my straw bed watching the
expiring light of the candle with that strange interest one attaches
to everything within the limits of a prison-cell. The flame waned and
flickered: now lighting up for a second the cold gray walls, scratched
with many a prisoner's name; now subsiding, it threw strange and fitful
shapes upon them,--figures that seemed to move and to beckon to one
another,--goblin outlines, wild and fanciful. Then came a bright flash
as the wick fell, and all was dark.

"If the dead do but sleep!" was the first thought that crossed my
mind as the gloom of total night wrapped every object about me, and a
stillness most appalling prevailed. Suddenly I heard the sounds of a
heavy bolt withdrawn and a door opening; then a low, rushing noise, like
wind blowing through a narrow corridor; and at last the marching sounds
of feet, and the accents of men speaking together: nearer and nearer
they came, and at length halted at the door of my cell. A cold, faint
feeling, the sickness of the heart, crept over me; the hour, the sounds,
reminded me of what so often I had heard men speak of in the Temple, and
the dread of assassination made me tremble from head to foot. The light
streamed from beneath the door, and reached to my bed; and I calculated
the number of steps it would take before they approached me. The key
grated in the lock and the door opened slowly, and three men stood
at the entrance. I sprang up wildly to my feet; a sudden impulse of
self-defence seized