d by the deputy-warden and Sir Giles Mompesson, our young knight
had traversed an underground corridor with cells on one side of it, and
then, descending a flight of stone steps, had reached a still lower pit,
in which the dismal receptacle was situated. Here he remained up to the
ankles in mud and water, while Grimbald unlocked the ponderous door, and
with a grin revealed the interior of the cavernous recess.

Nothing more dank and noisome could be imagined than the dungeon.
Dripping stone-walls, a truckle-bed with a mouldy straw-mattrass,
rotting litter scattered about, a floor glistening and slippery with
ooze, and a deep pool of water, like that outside, at the further
end,--these constituted the materials of the frightful picture presented
to the gaze. No wonder Sir Jocelyn should recoil, and refuse to enter
the cell.

"You don't seem to like your lodgings, worshipful Sir," said Grimbald,
still grinning, as he held up the lamp; "but you will soon get used to
the place, and you will not lack company--rats, I mean: they come from
the Fleet in swarms. Look! a score of 'em are making off
yonder--swimming to their holes. But they will come back again with some
of their comrades, when you are left alone, and without a light. Unlike
other vermin, the rats of the Fleet are extraordinarily sociable--ho!
ho!"

And, chuckling at his own jest, Grimbald turned to Sir Giles Mompesson,
who, with Joachim Tunstall, was standing at the summit of the steps, as
if unwilling to venture into the damp region below, and observed--"The
worshipful gentleman does not like the appearance of his quarters, it
seems, Sir Giles; but we cannot give him better,--and, though the cell
might be somewhat more comfortable if it were drier, and perhaps more
wholesome, yet it is uncommonly quiet, and double the size of any other
in the Fleet. I never could understand why it should be called the
'Stone Coffin'--but so it is. Some prisoners have imagined they would
get their death with cold from a single night passed within it--but
that's a mistaken notion altogether."

"You have proof to the contrary in Sir Ferdinando Mounchensey, father of
the present prisoner," said Sir Giles, in a derisive tone. "He occupied
that cell for more than six months. Did he not, good Grimbald? You had
charge of him, and ought to know?"

"One hundred and sixty days exactly, counting from the date of his
arrival to the hour of his death, was Sir Ferdinando an inmate of the