Page:The Road to Monterey (1925).pdf/194



ABRIEL HENDERSON often had speculated on the purpose of that barred embrasure high in the side of the warehouse wall. It was little more than a slit in the blank face of the ugly brown adobe, perhaps eight or nine inches deep and twice as wide. Heavy oak sills held the strong bars securely; a strong oak plank inside them closed the slight vent, or whatever it was designed to be.

The place must be the repository of something of extraordinary value, he had supposed. In all his duties about the warehouse, none of them ever had brought him into the room of this barred window. He often thought of inquiring of Don Felipe the purpose of it. Now he had been enlightened without inquiry.

It was the cell of Don Abrahan's private prison, the penitential place where the wills of strong men who rose at times in defiance of the patron's authority were broken. And if not their spirits, then their bodies. Don Abrahan's father had built it, and employed it in his day. Many a man's life had gone out in the torture of starvation and thirst within those thick, brown walls, the heavy plank locked at the barred slit to sequester even his dying groan.