own this was a case apart; in
ordinary circumstances, some one might have stumbled or been intimidated
into an admission; and what bound us together with a closeness beyond
that of mere comrades was a secret to which we were all committed and a
design in which all were equally engaged. No need to inquire as to its
nature: there is only one desire, and only one kind of design, that
blooms in prisons. And the fact that our tunnel was near done supported
and inspired us.

I came off in public, as I have said, with flying colours; the sittings
of the court of inquiry died away like a tune that no one listens to;
and yet I was unmasked--I, whom my very adversary defended, as good as
confessed, as good as told the nature of the quarrel, and by so doing
prepared for myself in the future a most anxious, disagreeable
adventure. It was the third morning after the duel, and Goguelat was
still in life, when the time came round for me to give Major Chevenix a
lesson. I was fond of this occupation; not that he paid me much--no
more, indeed, than eighteenpence a month, the customary figure, being a
miser in the grain; but because I liked his breakfasts and (to some
extent) himself. At least, he was a man of education; and of the others
with whom I had any opportunity of speech, those that would not have
held a book upside down would have torn the pages out for pipe-lights.
For I must repeat again that our body of prisoners was exceptional:
there was in Edinburgh Castle none of that educational busyness that
distinguished some of the other prisons, so that men entered them unable
to read, and left them fit for high employments. Chevenix was handsome,
and surprisingly young to be a major: six feet in his stockings, well
set up, with regular features and very clear grey eyes. It was
impossible to pick a fault in him, and yet the sum-total was
displeasing. Perhaps he was too clean; he seemed to bear about with him
the smell of soap. Cleanliness is good, but I cannot bear a man's nails
to seem japanned. And certainly he was too self-possessed and cold.
There was none of the fire of youth, none of the swiftness of the
soldier, in this young officer. His kindness was cold, and cruel cold;
his deliberation exasperating. And perhaps it was from this character,
which is very much the opposite of my own, that even in these days, when
he was of service to me, I approached him with suspicion and reserve.

I looked over his exercise in the usual f