nell is tolled there are reveries straying in
doubt, its sound cuts them into rigid fragments. A vague reverie is a
sort of refuge. Some indefinable diffuseness in anguish allows now and
then a ray of hope to pierce through it. A knell is precise and
desolating. It concentrates this diffusion of thought, and precipitates
the vapours in which anxiety seeks to remain in suspense. A knell speaks
to each one in the sense of his own grief or of his own fear. Tragic
bell! it concerns you. It is a warning to you.

There is nothing so dreary as a monologue on which its cadence falls.
The even returns of sound seem to show a purpose.

What is it that this hammer, the bell, forges on the anvil of thought?

Ursus counted, vaguely and without motive, the tolling of the knell.
Feeling that his thoughts were sliding from him, he made an effort not
to let them slip into conjecture. Conjecture is an inclined plane, on
which we slip too far to be to our own advantage. Still, what was the
meaning of the bell?

He looked through the darkness in the direction in which he knew the
gate of the prison to be.

Suddenly, in that very spot which looked like a dark hole, a redness
showed. The redness grew larger, and became a light.

There was no uncertainty about it. It soon took a form and angles. The
gate of the jail had just turned on its hinges. The glow painted the
arch and the jambs of the door. It was a yawning rather than an opening.
A prison does not open; it yawns--perhaps from ennui. Through the gate
passed a man with a torch in his hand.

The bell rang on. Ursus felt his attention fascinated by two objects. He
watched--his ear the knell, his eye the torch. Behind the first man the
gate, which had been ajar, enlarged the opening suddenly, and allowed
egress to two other men; then to a fourth. This fourth was the
wapentake, clearly visible in the light of the torch. In his grasp was
his iron staff.

Following the wapentake, there filed and opened out below the gateway in
order, two by two, with the rigidity of a series of walking posts, ranks
of silent men.

This nocturnal procession stepped through the wicket in file, like a
procession of penitents, without any solution of continuity, with a
funereal care to make no noise--gravely, almost gently. A serpent issues
from its hole with similar precautions.

The torch threw out their profiles and attitudes into relief. Fierce
looks, sullen attitudes.

Ursus recognized the fac