Page:Her Benny - Silas K Hocking (Warne, 1890).djvu/193

Rh he should be thus thrust down, and thrust down to a lower depth than he had known in his darkest days.

Could it be true, he asked himself again and again, that he, who had been trying so hard to be good and truthful and honest, was really in prison on a charge of theft? It had come upon him so suddenly that he thought sometimes it must be all some horrid dream, and that he would surely awake some time and find the bright future still before him.

And so the hours wore away, and the light faded in the little patch of sky that was visible through his high grated window, and the cell grew darker and more dismal all the while.

At length there was a tramp of feet in the court-yard outside. The key grated in the lock, the door flew open, and two lads were tumbled into the cell. These were followed in half an hour by three others, and Benny became aware by the noises in the court-yard that other cells were being filled as well as the one he occupied. And, as the darkness deepened, night grew hideous with shouts, and laughter, and songs, and curses loud and deep.

It seemed to him as if he had got to the very mouth of hell. Nothing that he had ever heard in Addler's Hall or Bowker's Row could at all compare with what he heard that night: now there was the sound of blows; now cries for help; now shrieks of murder, accompanied by volleys of oaths and shouts of laughter.

The companions of his own cell were on the whole