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For her sake he was revisiting this torture-chamber, from which he knew he must go again, blanched and shaken, as a man goes from a tomb where his dead lie unforgiving. He shut his teeth, went swiftly across the room, and beside a great carved oak table touched a hidden spring in the side of it. The spring snapped; the panel creaked a little and drew back.

At present, alas, it would seem as though no one dares even to hope! It is the great Slough of Despond of our time. And what a slough it is no man can gauge who has not waded therein, as some of us have done, up to the very neck for long years. Talk about Dante's Hell, and all the horrors and cruelties of the torture-chamber of the lost!

Sheldon the dentist sat up till the small hours that night, as he had done for many nights lately. He finished his work in the torture-chamber, and went up to the common sitting-room, or drawing-room as it was called by courtesy, a little before midnight. The servants had gone to bed, for there was no regular nightly watch in the apartment of the invalid. Mrs.

This was a little old man with a crabbed face and a body that seemed to have endured infernal twistings in some Inquisitioner's torture-chamber.

"To-morrow the charity of the Church hath resolved that she shall be had into the torture-chamber." I set my lips to the tankard, and drank long, to hide my face, and for that I was nigh swooning with a passion of fear and wrath. "Thanks to St. George," I said, "the end is nigh!" "The end of the tankard," quoth he, looking into it, "hath already come. You drink like a man of the Land Debatable."

To the right, under the shadow of the archway, which, space being limited, was used as an armoury, and hung with weapons, lay the court-room where prisoners were tried, and to the left a vaulted place with no window, not unlike a large cellar in appearance. This was the torture-chamber. Beyond was the courtyard, and at the back of it rose the prison.

He had improved his days by knitting garments for the statues of his favourite patron saints. He celebrated his return by re-introducing the Inquisition and the torture-chamber, both of which had been abolished by the Revolution.

"It is as we thought," said Roger; "it seems to be the custom in these Spanish prisons never to allow the prisoners to see or speak to anyone, even the jailer. You may depend upon it that we shall never have anyone entering this cell until they come to conduct us to the torture-chamber." And he shuddered; the recollection associated with the word "torture" was exceedingly unpleasant.

Of these they had their own vernacular translations, and large portions of them were committed to memory. But such translations spread broadcast views unfettered by the traditional interpretation of the Church, and the missionary zeal of the Waldenses was proof against the horrors of the Inquisition with its prison, torture-chamber, and stake.

Then, upon reflection, Erik went back to fetch the Punjab lasso, which is very curiously made out of catgut, and which might have set an examining magistrate thinking. This explains the disappearance of the rope. And now I discovered the lasso, at our feet, in the torture-chamber! ... I am no coward, but a cold sweat covered my forehead as I moved the little red disk of my lantern over the walls.