t
into an iron candlestick fixed against the wall: the other dragging in
a mattress on which to pass the night; for the prisoner was to be left
alone no more.

Then came the night--dark, dismal, silent night. Other watchers are
glad to hear this church-clock strike, for they tell of life and coming
day. To him they brought despair. The boom of every iron bell came
laden with the one, deep, hollow sound--Death. What availed the noise
and bustle of cheerful morning, which penetrated even there, to him?
It was another form of knell, with mockery added to the warning.

The day passed off. Day? There was no day; it was gone as soon as
come--and night came on again; night so long, and yet so short; long in
its dreadful silence, and short in its fleeting hours. At one time he
raved and blasphemed; and at another howled and tore his hair.
Venerable men of his own persuasion had come to pray beside him, but he
had driven them away with curses. They renewed their charitable
efforts, and he beat them off.

Saturday night. He had only one night more to live. And as he thought
of this, the day broke--Sunday.

It was not until the night of this last awful day, that a withering
sense of his helpless, desperate state came in its full intensity upon
his blighted soul; not that he had ever held any defined or positive
hope of mercy, but that he had never been able to consider more than
the dim probability of dying so soon. He had spoken little to either of
the two men, who relieved each other in their attendance upon him; and
they, for their parts, made no effort to rouse his attention. He had
sat there, awake, but dreaming. Now, he started up, every minute, and
with gasping mouth and burning skin, hurried to and fro, in such a
paroxysm of fear and wrath that even they--used to such
sights--recoiled from him with horror. He grew so terrible, at last,
in all the tortures of his evil conscience, that one man could not bear
to sit there, eyeing him alone; and so the two kept watch together.

He cowered down upon his stone bed, and thought of the past. He had
been wounded with some missiles from the crowd on the day of his
capture, and his head was bandaged with a linen cloth. His red hair
hung down upon his bloodless face; his beard was torn, and twisted into
knots; his eyes shone with a terrible light; his unwashed flesh
crackled with the fever that burnt him up. Eight--nine--then. If it
was not a trick to frighten him