omething, any little thing that is going on outside. He springs
suddenly upright--as if at a sound--and remains perfectly motionless.
Then, with a heavy sigh, he moves to his work, and stands looking at
it, with his head down; he does a stitch or two, having the air of a
man so lost in sadness that each stitch is, as it were, a coming to
life. Then, turning abruptly, he begins pacing his cell, moving his
head, like an animal pacing its cage. He stops again at the door,
listens, and, placing the palms of his hands against it with his
fingers spread out, leans his forehead against the iron. Turning
from it, presently, he moves slowly back towards the window, holding
his head, as if he felt that it were going to burst, and stops under
the window. But since he cannot see out of it he leaves off looking,
and, picking up the lid of one of the tins, peers into it, as if
trying to make a companion of his own face. It has grown very nearly
dark. Suddenly the lid falls out of his hand with a clatter--the
only sound that has broken the silence--and he stands staring
intently at the wall where the stuff of the shirt is hanging rather
white in the darkness--he seems to be seeing somebody or something
there. There is a sharp tap and click; the cell light behind the
glass screen has been turned up. The cell is brightly lighted.
Falder is seen gasping for breath.

A sound from far away, as of distant, dull beating on thick metal, is
suddenly audible. Falder shrinks back, not able to bear this sudden
clamor. But the sound grows, as though some great tumbril were
rolling towards the cell. And gradually it seems to hypnotize him.
He begins creeping inch by inch nearer to the door. The banging
sound, traveling from cell to cell, draws closer and closer; Falder's
hands are seen moving as if his spirit had already joined in this
beating, and the sound swells till it seems to have entered the very
cell. He suddenly raises his clenched fists. Panting violently, he
flings himself at his door, and beats on it."

Finally Falder leaves the prison, a broken ticket-of-leave man, the
stamp of the convict upon his brow, the iron of misery in his soul.
Thanks to Ruth's pleading, the firm of James How and Son is willing
to take Falder back in their employ, on condition that he give up
Ruth. It is then that Falder learns the awful news that the woman he
loves had been driven by the merciless economic Moloch to sell
herself. She "tried