Page:Bacheller--D'ri and I.djvu/362

D'RI AND I I made out the reading, shortly, as follows:—

"Twelve to-night cell door unlocked. Lift small window in corridor. Back to wall go right to road. Left two hundred paces to path. Left to river. Right twenty to thicket."

Having read the figures, I rolled the tissue firmly, and hid it in my ear. It was a day of some excitement, I remember, for that very afternoon I was condemned to death. A priest, having heard of my plight, came in that evening, and offered me the good ministry of the church. The words, the face, of that simple man, filled me with a deep tenderness for all who seek in the shadows of this world with the lantern of God's mercy. Never, so long as I live, shall an ill word of them go unrebuked in my hearing. He left me at 10.30, and as he went away, my jailer banged the iron door without locking it. Then I lay down there in the dark, and began to tell off the time by my heartbeats, allowing forty-five hundred to the hour, and was not far wrong. I thought much of his Lordship as I waited. To him I had been of some service, but, surely, not enough to explain