Page:Marsh--The seen and the unseen.djvu/80

56 Canterstone Jail was an old-fashioned jail, built in the good old-fashioned days when stone walls, six feet thick, were considered a sine quâ non in jails. In the broad noonday glare the wards in which the night-cells were were dimly lighted. Entering them at two a.m. one received an object-lesson in "Egyptian darkness." One had but to stretch out one's arms to more than span the flagstoned passage. And when one realised that on one side there was a six-foot wall, and on the other—surrounded, it is true, by other six-foot walls, but none the further off for that—lay the representatives of every shade of crime, one did not need to have an abnormal imagination to begin to comprehend that it is not always the part of wisdom to laugh at the tales which are told of churchyards yawning, and of the graves which yield their dead.

At Canterstone there were, in each ward, four floors: the ground floor, the first floor, the second floor, and the third floor, Solly's sleeping-place was on the third floor, that farthest from the ground and nearest to the sky. The governor and Warder Slater entered the ward at one end, Solly's cell being at the other. Directly they reached the landing the warder laid his hand on Mr. Paley's arm. "Do you hear, sir? She's with him still!"

There was a note of exultation in the officer's voice which seemed, all things considered, to be a little out of place. The governor made no reply. He stood and listened. The general stillness rendered any sound there might be still more audible. That there was a sound there could be no doubt. The governor listened, so as to be quite clear in his own