and
divert his mind with it. He had his wish. The connection was made with
the international telephone-station, and day by day, and night by night,
he called up one corner of the globe after another, and looked upon its
life, and studied its strange sights, and spoke with its people, and
realised that by grace of this marvellous instrument he was almost as
free as the birds of the air, although a prisoner under locks and bars.
He seldom spoke, and I never interrupted him when he was absorbed in
this amusement. I sat in his parlour and read, and smoked, and the
nights were very quiet and reposefully sociable, and I found them
pleasant. Now and then I would her him say 'Give me Yedo;' next, 'Give
me Hong-Kong;' next, 'Give me Melbourne.' And I smoked on, and read in
comfort, while he wandered about the remote underworld, where the
sun was shining in the sky, and the people were at their daily work.
Sometimes the talk that came from those far regions through the
microphone attachment interested me, and I listened.

Yesterday--I keep calling it yesterday, which is quite natural, for
certain reasons--the instrument remained unused, and that also was
natural, for it was the eve of the execution day. It was spent in tears
and lamentations and farewells. The governor and the wife and child
remained until a quarter-past eleven at night, and the scenes I
witnessed were pitiful to see. The execution was to take place at four
in the morning. A little after eleven a sound of hammering broke out
upon the still night, and there was a glare of light, and the child
cried out, 'What is that, papa?' and ran to the window before she could
be stopped and clapped her small hands and said, 'Oh, come and see,
mamma--such a pretty thing they are making!' The mother knew--and
fainted. It was the gallows!

She was carried away to her lodging, poor woman, and Clayton and I
were alone--alone, and thinking, brooding, dreaming. We might have been
statues, we sat so motionless and still. It was a wild night, for winter
was come again for a moment, after the habit of this region in the early
spring. The sky was starless and black, and a strong wind was blowing
from the lake. The silence in the room was so deep that all outside
sounds seemed exaggerated by contrast with it. These sounds were fitting
ones: they harmonised with the situation and the conditions: the boom
and thunder of sudden storm-gusts among the roofs and chimneys, then the
dying down