ots of blood, would seem to indicate that he had
suffered personal injury in some recent struggle. His eyes were open.
They were fixed desparingly, perhaps unconsciously, upon that small
grating which looked into the upper world.

That grating slants upwards, and looks to the west, so that any one
confined in that dreary dungeon might be tantalized, on a sweet summer's
day, by seeing the sweet blue sky, and occasionally the white clouds
flitting by in that freedom which he cannot hope for.

The carol of a bird, too, might reach him there. Alas! sad remembrance
of life, and joy, and liberty.

But now all is deepening gloom. The prisoner sees nothing--hears
nothing; and the sky is not quite dark. That small grating looks like a
strange light-patch in the dungeon wall.

Hark! some footstep sounds upon his ear. The creaking of a door
follows--a gleam of light shines into the dungeon, and the tall
mysterious-looking figure in the cloak stands before the occupant of
that wretched place.

Then comes in the other man, and he carries in his hand writing
materials. He stoops to the stone couch on which the prisoner lies, and
offers him a pen, as he raises him partially from the miserable damp
pallet.

But there is no speculation in the eyes of that oppressed man. In vain
the pen is repeatedly placed in his grasp, and a document of some
length, written on parchment, spread out before him to sign. In vain is
he held up now by both the men, who have thus mysteriously sought him in
his dungeon; he has not power to do as they would wish him. The pen
falls from his nerveless grasp, and, with a deep sigh, when they cease
to hold him up, he falls heavily back upon the stone couch.

Then the two men looked at each other for about a minute silently; after
which he who was the shorter of the two raised one hand, and, in a voice
of such concentrated hatred and passion as was horrible to hear, he
said,--

"D--n!"

The reply of the other was a laugh; and then he took the light from the
floor, and motioned the one who seemed so little able to control his
feelings of bitterness and disappointment to leave the place with him.

With a haste and vehemence, then, which showed how much angered he was,
the shorter man of the two now rolled up the parchment, and placed it in
a breast-pocket of his coat.

He cast a withering look of intense hatred on the form of the
nearly-unconscious prisoner, and then prepared to follow the other.

But