United States or Afghanistan ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
He stretched himself and shook off the nightmare. Free! No gaoler was coming like a bad spirit to shatter the night's happy dream of freedom. He was free! His pallet had not to be hooked up to the wall at a certain hour; he could lie as long as he wanted to, the whole day, if he liked. But now he had more important things to do; life was waiting. He hastily put on his clothes.
His son a strange yearning towards the vicious creature he had carelessly glanced at that morning, took possession of him. He started up again, and seized his hat. He would go down, even though it were nearly midnight, and get the gaoler to admit him to the prisoner's cell. He made a few steps towards the door, and then stopped. No, better not.
They were of coarse material, such as neither gaoler nor under-gaoler would ever wear themselves: all they would do would be to take them into market and convert them into money. "Moors have no feelings," people say, and say wrongly; but that, to a great extent, it is true take just one instance the state of the prisons and prisoners. It was enough in the distance to "wind" the Tetuan prison.
It was at the hour of noon, after having exhausted every possible means, poured out his gold to the last piece, and embraced the knees of the lowest serving man, that Solomon the fisherman took his way to his son's prison. His brow was so woebegone that the guards drew back, seized with pity, and the gaoler wept as he closed the door of the cell upon him.
Thus he was watched and guarded with all the spiteful eagerness that some jealous old maid might have displayed, the overreaching zeal of a gaoler who might carry precautions so far as to exclude even such rays of light as might creep through the chinks of the prison-house.
She must undoubtedly have given Siptah some command, for the latter at first shrugged his shoulders disapprovingly then, after a somewhat lengthy discussion, half grave, half jesting, he sprang from the chariot and beckoned to the chief gaoler. "Have these men," he called from the road so loudly that Kasana could not fail to hear, "seen the face of the good god, the lord of both worlds?"
He had a tiny cell, nine feet by five, with one little window high up, and for the first month of his imprisonment wore irons; at the same time his gaoler was so much open to bribery that he always found his door open on Sunday morning, and was able to shuffle upstairs and say mass in the cell of Ralph Emerson, once the companion of Campion, and a lay-brother of the Society of Jesus.
We were waited upon at dinner by the gaoler himself, who was willing to do our guest all the honour in his power. But before we had well dined, another message was brought from his nephew, desiring permission to appear, in order to vindicate his innocence and honour, with which request the Baronet complied, and desired Mr Thornhill to be introduced.
The wife of the convict in question profited by this regulation to bring her husband the necessary money; and on receiving this, the gaoler arranged matters so that on the next morning the convict was not fastened to the same chain with a fellow-criminal, as is usually the case, but could walk alone, and thus easily get clear off, more especially as the spot in which they worked was a very lonely one.
"Thank you, thank you!" said Ferleitner; "only now I want a pen." "Oh no, my dear sir, no. We know that sort of thing. Since the notary in Number 43 stabbed himself with a steel pen five years ago, I don't give any more," said the gaoler. "But I can't write without a pen," returned Konrad. "That's not my business; I can't let you have a pen," the old man assured him.
Word Of The Day